LIBRARf OF CONBRESS. 



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UNITED STATKS OF .A.AItuicA.f 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES 



BY THE LATE 



HENRY ALFORD, D.d. 

DEAN OF CANTERBURY 



EDITED BY HIS WIDOW 



1 




LONDON 
DALDY, ISBISTER, & CO. 

56, LUDGATE HILL 

1875 



1> 4 V 



LONDON : 

PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., 

CITY ROAD. 



PREFACE. 



A T the request of the Editor, I have under- 
taken to write a preface to the following 
Homilies, explaining her motives for repub- 
lishing them, and the circumstances under 
which they were written. They appeared first 
in the Sunday Magazine during the years 
1868 — 1871; the last two in the number for 
January, 1871, the very month in which, after 
so short an illness, the busy life of their author 
came to its peaceful close. 

It had been his intention to republish them 
in a separate form, and with this view a 
portion of them was already in the printer's 
hands at the time of his death. His widow, 



vi PREFACE. 

therefore, looks upon the carrying out of this 
intention of his as a sacred trust. 

Moreover, these Homilies are, as a friend 
has remarked, " more like autobiography than 
anything he has left in prose — a sort of auto- 
type of what he was in family life at the fire- 
side ;" and it is in this light also, as a fitting 
supplement to his " Life/' that the Editor has 
been anxious for their republication. 

It is needless here to enter at any length 
into the character or acquirements of Dean 
Alford, the former having been already set 
forth in all its purity, single-mindedness, and 
earnestness, and the latter in their versatility 
and extent, in the " Life " already referred to. 
But there is one aspect in which it may be 
well for a while to regard him before entering 
upon the following Homilies, and that is, by 
the light of his own fireside, in the atmosphere 
of his home. 

Few men, we should think, ever had the 
feeling of family affection more strongly de- 



PREFACE. Vll 

veloped in them than lie had. So intense was 
it, indeed, that at times it seemed almost to 
border upon pain. Thus the natural breaking- 
up of the family circle was a real trial to him, 
and it is to the void felt at his fireside after the 
marriage of his second daughter, that we owe 
these touching Homilies. "We who remember 
the happy Canterbury Sundays of the past, 
before the family party was broken up, can 
easily picture those later ones on which the 
following pages were written. The daughters, 
who were so much to their father, and the 
cousins and friends they gathered around them, 
were no longer grouped about in the large 
drawing-room, he, the centre of them all. The 
many-sided chat that comes from the contact 
of many minds was no longer possible. He 
and his life's companion were alone once more 
— as much alone as when she left her father's 
home at Heale, and they went forth to face 
the world together, in the spring-tide of their 
youth. But there were no gaps in the family 



Vlll PREFACE. 

circle then, no missing ones to mourn. Now, 
after the lapse of years, the case was altered. 
Two graves in Wymeswold churchyard had 
long ago claimed two missing ones, two happy 
hearths elsewhere had made two more inroads 
on his own. And so he was fain to call around 
his chair on these later Sunday evenings the 
" brain children" of his fancy, and pour out to 
them some of the bright, fresh thoughts, that 
floated through his ever-active mind in these 
" Fireside Homilies." 

To those who knew him well they are elo- 
quent of many lovable traits in his character. 
Here we see his hungering after sympathy, in 
this calling of his dear ones around him to be 
partakers of his choicest thoughts. Here we 
see his fearless truthfulness, in neither slur- 
ring over anything that was, nor pretending 
to anything that was not his own sincere 
conviction. Here, too, we catch a glimpse of 
that wonderful buoyancy of his nature, which 
threw such a charm over his life. This per- 



PREFACE. IX 

haps was never more evident than a few weeks 
before his death, when, suddenly debarred by 
the doctor's decree from literary work — that 
w r ork which had seemed an essential part of 
his existence — not even a shadow appeared to 
fall on his spirit; but, as though braced-up by 
the sudden trial to a still higher stand-point, 
we find him full of thankfulness for the work- 
time already allowed him, full of bright re- 
sources for the future.* 

But it was not only in this rebound after 
a blow, which would have beep, crushing to 
many men, that the buoyant youthfulness of 
his nature showed itself. With children he 
was a child again, romping with them so much 
on their own level, that reverence was apt to 
be forgotten in the fun. To young people 
he was especially kind, throwing himself so 
heartily into their pleasures and pursuits, 
whether it were a picnic, a charade, a game 
of croquet, or a country walk, that they felt 
* See the "Life," 3rd edition, p. 469. ^ 



x PREFACE. 

him to be one of themselves. And at the 
same time lie was ever ready to draw out 
and encourage any taste or talent that might 
be latent in them. Most justly does Dr. 
Stoughton remark : ' ' Dr. Alford's nature was 
formed for kindly and loving companionship,"* 
and most cheerfully does this come home to 
us in these " Fireside Homilies." 

Here we see too, in dainty bits of word- 
painting, traces of his great love of nature. 
The same friend, Dr. Stoughton, touches on 
this point also, in his description of a walk he 
took with the Dean at Canterbury in January, 
1869. t And even as we write we recall, 
with something like a present enjoyment of 
them, delightful rambles in that pretty neigh- 
bourhood in bygone days. The time for these 
long walks was usually between the close of 
the afternoon service in the Cathedral, and the 
seven o'clock dinner- hour at the Deanery. 



* See " Life," p. 419. 

t Ibid., 3rd edition, p. 512. 



PREFACE. xi 

Then, a large family party, we would go off to 
the surrounding woods, the Dean entering so 
heartily into the pleasure of it all; ever ready 
to point out any fine view or striking feature 
in the landscape, sometimes sitting sketching 
while we roamed about, always taking an 
interest in the botany of the woods, and often 
returning home laden with spoils. 

But perhaps his enjoyment of art comes out 
still more strongly in the following Homilies. 
How lovingly he dwells on each detail in his 
favourite pictures ! We are told that it needs 
a poet thoroughly to appreciate poetry, and 
so surely it is with painting. In Dean AlfordV 
case this need was fully met. He was an artist 
himself of no mean capacity, and traces with 
an artist's eye the most striking merits in these 
works of the old masters. 

Something more, however, was necessary for 
their full interpretation. The deeply religious 
sentiments embodied in these works required 
above all a deeply religious mind to enter into 



xii PREFACE. 

them, and this was a qualification pre-emi- 
nently possessed by the Dean, as his "Life/' 
from first to last, testifies. It is, indeed, for 
the insight we gain, through his " Journals 
and Letters," into the earnestness of his inner 
Christian life, from his boyhood to his death, 
that we especially prize them. Trusting that 
the same earnest, loving spirit, may make itself 
felt in these "Fireside Homilies," we commend 
them to the public, reminding them, in his 
own words, that these " evening talks " of his 
are " rather exercises of the fancy about divine 
things, than regular treatments of divine things 
themselves." * 

E. M. ALFOKD. 

The Mount, Taunton, 
September, 1874. 



See "Fireside Homilies," No. X. p. 151. 



TTEKE we are, darlings, by our cozy fireside 
this Sunday evening. If there be a heaven 
on earth, it is this. Very little makes it up. 
We have here no scenery, no gaiety, no merry 
game going on : yet how happy we all are ! 
There is dear mamma's loving face, one half 
in the bright glow of the fire; and Jessie's 
curls glittering in the same ; and little frail 
Margey, holding up her book to screen her 
cheek, and her other hand resting with mine 
on my knee ; and there are all the loved ones 
far away but seeming very near to us to-night. 
And why are we so happy ? 

Well, it's because we believe. We, sitting 
here on the day of rest, and at the end of its 
services, are just enjoying the luxury of faith. 

B 



2 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

What an odd word, Jessie, is not it ? But it's 
a very true one. I said, and I say, the luxury 
of faith. And how so ? 

Why first, perhaps, because the day's labours 
of faith are oyer. I have done my work, and 
you have done yours.* My two services, and 
afternoon school, and christenings, are over ; 
and just as we feel, after a good walk, a glow 
that keeps the heat in us for hours, so I feel 
my heart, and my body too, aglow with the 
day's, exercise. So much good talking, so 
much honest ministering, have warmed up my 
religion, which on week days is often so cold ; 
and I'm like an old dog that has been hunting 
all day, curled round before the master's fire. 
And you too, darlings, you've done your work. 
You've some of you, no more classes to teach ; 
you've all of you, no more sermons to listen 
to. I dare say you know the feeling of waking 
on a Sunday morning with a kind of dread — 

* His thoughts are here probably returning to the days 
of his parish work at Wymeswold, Leicestershire. — Ed. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 3 

a feeling of something unusual about to be 
that day; and then you suddenly remember 
that it's Sunday, and that's some relief, but 
still somehow you wish it were a week-day. 
But then how much better it turns out than 
you had apprehended ! Even in the taking 
out of the clean things to put on, even in the 
handling of the last new dress, there is a 
trifling pleasure which reconciles us to the 
day; and then as it goes on, the further in, 
the pleasanter. You sometimes think you'd 
like to sit at home instead of going to church ; 
those dull prayers — that long dreary sermon 
— how I wish it would pour, and we couldn't 
go ! But then when you get there, you 
gradually get interested; some saying of our 
dearest Lord gets down into the well of the 
heart, and brings up the fresh spring water 
to the eyes ; or the singing cheers you ; or the 
sermon touches you ; and you come away with 
a feeling which you don't express, that it was 
good to be there. 



4 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

And yet, with, all this, who doesn't feel glad 
that Sunday's services are over ? They were 
very good for us ; they lifted our thoughts, 
and inspired our nature ; but lifting and in- 
spiring are tiring processes for the same poor 
nature, and so at the end of them there is 
a kind of cheery satisfaction that the day is 
done. 

But don't think that this satisfaction is an 
unchristian or an unbelieving one. I think 
it is just the contrary. We feel quiet and 
satisfied after a good meal. I, for one, like to 
lie back in this old chair and feel one thumb 
against the other. But it isn't from any dis- 
respect to beef and pudding — far from it ; it's 
because I'm digesting them, and am thankful 
for them, and satisfied with partaking of 
them. 

And so it is now. The holy faith, to us four 
who sit round this fire, is in us, digesting. It 
has calmed and fed us. All its mastication, so 
to speak, is over for the time. Its questions, 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 5 

and doctrines, and exhortations, and warnings, 
which we have been working at all day, are 
at present out of our sight. And we are just 
sitting in the light of our Father's countenance, 
enjoying his love to us, as we shall sit when 
this great religious service of Life is over, and 
we have taken our places round the fireside at 
his Home. 

Well, this is one reason. But the effect 
which the day has had upon us may be looked 
at in other lights. What we have done and 
shared in to-day, has had an actual effect on 
our religious being. It would hardly be 
possible for so many hours to be talking about 
and making real the objects of our faith, with- 
out that faith having become more sure, and 
more real, than it was before. Don't you, my 
darlings, — I am sure I do, — find it inexpres- 
sibly difficult on a week-day to think of the 
great throne, and the sea of glass, and the 
blessed elders, and the glorified Lamb, right 
over our heads, and of ourselves as in their 



6 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

presence ? Suppose I am riding, :: swimming, 

or writing letters, or doing any commc: bin _ . 
such, a thought pulls me nj ac ere with a 

jerk: and I'm obliged :; stop a momo::": and 
think : and before I can reallv imagine them 

■ D 

above me. a page of Scripture seems :; rise 
before my eyes, and I see them through ~. 
Ifot so this evening. Here they all are — around 
us — above us. We hs ve hri, like the Apostle, 
on the house-top praying, trU we have (alien 

into a trance. Faith has had its - T vin£ for 

_ 

a whole day, and we are penetrated with it 
I have often thought I should like to die on 
a Sunday evening, after ":"_t services of the 
: the change would be sc small. The 
world sounds bo distant to-night. I: is::': in 
the streets; it isn't on cur tables: i: isn't :n 
our lips. There is no look :: i: on ourf:;:s. 
Our rooms, £nd :::r furniture, and our fire- 
place, and ite bright living inhabitant, all 
seem only as the cabin of the -Li T :' in ~Li:_ 
we aro taking our voyage. Now :.: >thertimefl 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

I find myself hammering away at this cabin, 
painting it, and gilding it, as if I were to be 
in it for ever ; but on these evenings, I am 
lifted out of it altogether ; I can sit in it, and 
think on the haven where I would be. 

And what a thing it is thus to get into 
tune — thus to have at last succeeded in fixing 
the focus of faith's telescope, and to see the 
bright hills, and the glorious trees, and the 
sweet streams, and the clustering pinnacles, 
of the land far away ! what a Father we 
have ! What a price He paid for us, and how 
He loves us ! Here are we four — nothing on 
earth can ever' harm us — dear little Margey 
mav have as much sickness to go through as 
she has gone through already — dear Jessie 
may be disappointed in what we know is so 
near her heart — mamma and I may have many 
a rough place in our sloping path before we 
come to the river beneath ; but here we feel, 
this Sunday evening, that all will be as 
nothing : the mighty Love, the everlasting 



8 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

arms — these will keep us safe ; our great 
Sunday evening will be as peaceful, and as 
cozy, as this, one of our little Sunday evenings, 
ay, and a thousand times happier too. 

But then, darlings, we ought not to think 
of ourselves only. Even little Margey knows, 
that to look at a very beautiful thing is intense 
delight. And what is so beautiful as that which 
we have been looking at all day — which we 
can look at quietly, and as if it were our own, 
to-night ? I mean the whole great gift that 
our Father has given us — ourselves ; and the 
great world to live in and die in, and the sweet 
life that is to come, and the blessed, loving, 
and perfect One, in us and about us, and 
waiting there for us ? "What a city of beauty, 
what a school of beauty, what a great cathedral 
of beauty it all is ! Every turn, every corner, 
every shifting light, have new objects full of 
light and glory. What hundreds of poets 
have sung of it — what hundreds of painters 
have got their subjects from it — what hundreds 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. • 9 

of musicians have tuned their lyres to it ! 
What art is like Christian art — has such noble 
forms, such glorious scenes of suffering and of 
acting, such divine faces — such blessed repose 
in the scenes of earth — such flights of imagi- 
nation in the anticipating heaven? What 
nature is like Christian nature — 86ft, without 
effeminacy — pure, without prudery — free, and 
yet obedient? The very point of union of 
reclaimed nature and glorified art is the body 
of the Incarnate Redeemer. In its purity of 
sinless, unclothed childhood — ija its majesty 
of teaching and healing — in its mighty power 
of suffering — in its victory of resurrection 
glory — Jesus, the Son of God, the image of 
the Father, the spotless, the divine, has brought 
into our world the form of perfect beauty, for 
all to look upon and be blessed. 

Thon again, to come down from the Highest 
among ourselves again, there's another reason 
yet why we are so happy this evening. I dare 
say, little Margey, you would like often to 



io FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

come and nestle close to me as now ; but then 
you look at papa, and you see a great book 
full of figures before liim ; or you see him with 
his envelopes and his note paper, looking 
puzzled, and you know he's busy (terrible word 
for you, poor little lassie) ; and if you were to 
come and lay your hand in his, you're afraid 
he would look perhaps sterner than usual and 
say, ■' Don't, my child, I'm busy" But to- 
night you've no such fear. You know the 
little hand will be clasped, and put on the 
knee ; there's no such vrord as " busy " to come 
between papa and you. And if mamma, or if 
Jessie ventures on other days to sit cozy by 
the fire, the thought immediately comes, " Ah, 
but I ought to be working this or writing 
that; this is very comfortable, but really I 
must be up and doing, lazy soul that I 
am!" 

Now on these evenings there are no such 
thoughts to interfere with rest. Rest is our 
right, and we take our fill of it. It is an 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. n 

approach, my darlings, to the state of the 
blessed dead* when they have earned their 
repose and sleep, " full of rest from head to 
feet," as the poet has it. The pleasure of other 
days becomes the duty of this one ; and so there 
is no contrast between duty and pleasure, and 
duty becomes sweetness itself. 

Well, my children, see there's dear mamma 
dropped to sleep, and carrying the rest a step 
further than we are ; and I have been actually 
preaching you another sermon, when I said 
we were happy because there ^were no more 
sermons to hear. But I know it's been from 
the heart: and I think by Jessie's bright 
swimming eye, and by Margey's pressing hand 
every now and then, that it was spoken to the 
heart. 

And now, Jessie, my love, for that glorious 



* The Dean at this time, Advent 1868, was preaching in 
Canterbury Cathedral a series of sermons on " The State of 
the Blessed Dead," afterwards published in a small volume. 
—Ed. 



12 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 

" Comfort ye my people." I'm afraid my tenor 
won't reach that Gr, after all these sermons, 
Never mind, there'll be the magnificent chorus, 
" All flesh shall see it together." 
Oh, when, my darlings, when ? 



II. 



CO I must do it again, Margey; must I? 
Well, only mind one thing, my little one. 
If a thing's worth doing, let us do it again 
and again ; but don't let us fall into habits for 
habit's sake. I've a horror of things becoming 
institutions, merely because we ^ove to do the 
same thing at the same time. And if I find 
myself getting into this (mind, it's a tempta- 
tion we are all liable to), I make a point of 
altering the time, or the manner, or some- 
thing, so that the act may not be the same, 
or may not be done at the same time. You 
know, some things must be thus done ; for 
instance, meals, and prayers, and recurring 
celebrations of any sort : but our tendency is, 
to weave nets round ourselves which Provi- 



14 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

dence has not woven ; and then if anything 
breaks these nets, we make ourselves miserable 
about it. What do you think about it, Jessie ? 
for I know mamma is with me. 

" Well, papa, bondage is very pleasant ; far 
pleasanter than freedom. You've got what to 
do set you already, and haven't the trouble 
of choosing ; and then it seems so important, 
and such a duty when it comes. And when 
you go to bed, you think yourself so good for 
having been punctual all the day, when per- 
haps there was nothing worth being punctual 
about." 

All right, Jessie ; that rings well. But we 
mustn't lose our homily. And now what shall 
it be about? I know, I think — and little 
Margey is squeezing my fingers so hard, that 
I think she knows too. 

What a subject it is ! All Saints' Day ! 
Well, suppose we don't care about commemo- 
rations, as some good Christian men don't. 
And suppose some one said to us, "Let us 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 15 

talk now about the great multitude whom no 
man can number — about those who are before 
the throne of God, and have all tears wiped 
from their eyes," — what eye of ours would 
not sparkle, what spirit would not glow with 
delight ? For surely, darlings, it is the sub- 
ject of all subjects to talk of and to* look into* 
Here are we four, loving the dear Lord, and 
trusting in Him — and we seem all alone in a 
corner of the great world; we see very few 
besides one another ; we live mostly in private, 
and a happy life it is. But how strange it is 
to think, that the happiest life of all — far 
more blessed than anything we know of here 
below — will be a life in public ! "What an 
intolerable life it would be to us now ! Only 
fancy dear mamma turned out of her snug 
boudoir, with her books and her drawing, and 
her working for the poor, into a great multi- 
tude whom no man can number ! There was 
a day when Jessie perhaps would have liked 
it, but I don't think she would now that one 



1 6 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

eye has singled her out and loves to look 
into hers. 

And then think of this, too — that this 
supreme happiness of being among the in- 
numerable multitude will be enjoyed by every 
one in it. How immensely men must be 
altered, before that can be the case ! Surely 
there must be some dark poison mixed 
among the common blood of humanity, which 
makes men hate one another. In the pre- 
sent life, this hate is almost a necessity, at 
least in its passive forms. It guards us and 
our plans and our feelings from being tossed 
about upon men's tongues and made sport of. 
It prevents the knowing and interfering from 
taking advantage of us to our hurt. But how 
strange again will be the day when it shall 
be altogether absent ! Shakspeare somewhere 
speaks of a man " wearing his heart upon his 
sleeve, for daws to peck at ; " * but then, I sup- 
pose, we shall all wear our hearts outside, and 

* Othello, act i. scene i. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 17 

not have a thought that we don't want every- 
body to see. 

And then another thins: is passing strange 

— the thinness of the veil between this world 
and that, and yet the impossibility of ever 
seeing through it. I was thinking to-dav of 
our dear good Archbishop.* Last week he was 
with us. -N*ow, he is there. One who was part 
of our system — whose acts entered into my 
calculations — to whom I wrote and from whom 
I received letters, ay, and a very few days ago, 
— in an instant past the border and in that 
strange land. And we fancied as late as last 
month, that we should have him here with 
us, coming as if he were our father, and had 
had the bringing of us up all his life, and 
taking this little thin hand of yours, Hargey, 
and asking after your welfare in a voice whose 
very tone made you better : so much was he 

* LoDgley, who died October 23th, 1S6S. For s;ine 
remarks on his enthronement and death see •'• Life of Dean 
Alfoid," 3rd edit. pp. 358, 419.— Er. 

C 



1 8 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

mixed up with, our every-day anticipations ; 
and now we have to think of him as in that 
(to us) solemn world. 

And do you remember, Jessie, when we 
stood, all four, round Edmund's dying bed,* 
with the sunset from the western sea filling 
the room with rosy light : and we watched till 
the dear features lost meaning and their lines 
stiffened, and then I pressed down the eye- 
lids, and we left mamma with him, and we 
three went out bewildered, and sat down on 
the beach, and I said, Where is he now ? I 
have it all before me — indeed that lovely bit 
of water-colour by Philip Mitchell which 
hangs there would bring it before me, could 

* The Dean here describes the death of our last surviving 
son, Ambrose Oke, who died at Babbicombe, South Devon, 
August 31st, 1850, aged ten years. The water-coloured 
drawing, referred to, was bought by the Dean some years 
after: it is a sketch of the beach at Babbicombe, just 
below the "Carey Arms," where our dear child died. It 
hung on the left-hand side of the fire-place in the large 
drawing-room at the Deanery, close to the chair where the 
Dean always sat on Sunday evenings. — Ed. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 19 

I ever forget it. The sun had gone down, 
and had left in the lower sky a few lines of 
dull red, and under them the sea looked a 
pale ghastly blue (so it seemed to me) — and 
the sky above was clear, but as yet without 
a star. And there was not a sound, nor a 
breath, nor a ripple. All seemed to speak of 
a presence gone. He who had been about 
those rocks, and on that beach, and cleaving 
those waters — and now ? 

Well, dear ones, it fairly beats us. And it's 
good for us to sit and think*, that all our 
thoughts and hope about that unseen state, 
and those who are there, is simply and only 
faith, and nothing else. We know no more 
now, with our Gospel and our Bibles, about it 
and them, than the heathen know. I mean, 
none has described it to us : none has gone 
through the change, and come back to tell us 
how it was. 

Simply faith: but then what a treasure of 
faith it is ! what a glorious thing is that resur- 



20 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 

rectum from the dead ! "Whichever way I look 
at it, it appears more wonderful and precious. 
Xow just think of it in this war. Lay your 
thoughts into mine, little Margey, as you are 

laying your hand into mine. Tin going to 
take you through some dark and foul places, 
but don't be afraid to go with me. 

Think of the blessed Jesus, that last day of 
his life. You know Him by pictures. But the 
reality was hardly like the pictures. His form 
that day must have been very mean and vile 
to contemplate. Crushed, beaten, bruised, de- 
filed : even his very look of heavenly meek- 
ness (for we have seen such things ) provoking 
contempt, as of one broken in spirit and with- 
out courage. Look on, mv children : don't be 
afraid of plain language, as long as it keeps 
within the bounds of reverence ; and those I 
am sure you love that Blessed One too well 
ever to transgress. See Him cuffed, hustled, 
knocked down by a brutal mob : hurried along 
that street amidst the triumph of his enemies, 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 21 

and at last — it is St. Peter's language, not 
mine — nailed up to a log of wood — stripped 
and shamed — an object which, those who saw 
beat upon their breasts and turned away. 

Now, why am I dwelling on the least wel- 
come parts of this description ? Just to pro- 
duce the effect I feel I am producing by this 
little arm clinging tighter round my knee as I 
speak. We cannot bear to think of this utter 
shame of our dear Lord. Yes, but it's good 
for us to think of it. The very darkness of the 
cloud makes the sunshine brighter : the very 
wailings of this dirge bring out the grand out- 
burst of the chorus which follows. 

Carry all that has been said in your minds 
— then go on. The poor body — all paleness 
and wounds— is taken down, is rained on by 
many tears, is swathed by pious hands, is 
carried to the dark chink in the rock. How 
little thought Joseph and Mcodemus, as they 
stooped and deposited it, flat and stiff and life- 
less, in the recess of the caye, of anything un- 



22 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

usual to follow ! How little thought the holy 
women, as they saw the stone rolled to the 
door, what hands would roll it away ! 

But let us look again. It is morning, and 
the risen sun glitters on the walls and battle- 
ments of the city, and the garden trees wave 
in the fresh awakened breeze, and the birds 
are raising their spring chorus of praise. It is 
the same cave — but open. Before it stoops the 
Magdalene, weeping. Two youths sit within, 
fairer than the sons of men, in pure white 
robes. They ask her of her trouble. She 
answers them. But what does she see ? While 
she is answering, she sees their countenances 
alter, and she looks behind for the cause. He 
himself stands by her. Incredulous at first 
she knows the sound of the voice that pro- 
nounces her name ; she worships Him : she 
runs to tell the disciples. 

And from this moment onward, glory bursts 
upon glory in the eyes of the wondering fol- 
lowers of Jesus. Where is the despised, abused 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 23 

form now ? Where the face defiled with shame 
and spitting ? " Reach hither thine hand, and 
thrust it into my side :" what a glorious Body- 
must have been unveiled when these words 
were uttered ! . " A spirit hath not flesh and 
bones, as ye see me have :" then his resurrec- 
tion frame must have been compacted and 
built, even as this of ours, but we may conceive 
with what beauty and splendour. And in the 
moment when He rose in the pure summer 
noon from the top of Olivet, and the cloud re- 
ceived him out of their sight, what a vision 
must they have enjoyed of the glory of per- 
fected humanity ! What a streak of burning 
light on their memory must have been those 
forty days ! 

Thus much then we do know — thus much 
there is for faith to fasten upon. He went 
into that unknown world vile, despised, crushed, 
an object of aversion and scorn : he returned 
to show himself to our faith a perfect and 
glorified Body : the very type and flower of 



24 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

our Humanity. And the marvellous history 
as we read and rejoice, how full it is of human 
interest ! that walk to Emmaus, — that chal- 
lenge to Thomas, — that meal on the shore of 
Gennesaret ! Had the risen Saviour flashed 
out a glorious apparition before their eyes, girt 
with attendant angels, and then been with- 
drawn — had they been rapt into a trance and 
beheld Him at the Father's right hand, — 
where would have been the assurance that now 
clings round our firesides and broods over our 
homesteads, that the Lord is risen ? 

And so, darlings, that is all man's eye has 
ever seen of the world on the other side — the 
reflection of its brightness from the glorified 
Body of Jesus. And we know, that as the 
firstfruits, so the harvest : as He is, so shall 
we be. 

We have talked long enough, for I hear the 
church clock striking ten, and the servants 
will be ready for prayers. 

Jessie, my love, look out " I know that my 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 25 

Redeemer liveth :" you're in good voice to- 
day, and we shall all enjoy it. And, Margey, 
just run and tell Sampson to bring his violon- 
cello and his Messiah : and we'll end with 
" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." 



III. 

4i TXTELL, Margey, there's no fear of a 
sacred institution now. Last Sunday, 
preaching in London ; the Sunday before 
helping poor Lacey in his terrible bereave- 
ment ; and the Sunday before that, laid up 
with neuralgia. I think we've earned our 
homily to-night. And so we are to talk 
about Christmas, are we?" 

" Something about Christmas, please, papa p" 

" Oh, I see. That sly emphasis means, I 
suppose, not exactly the main subject, but some 
of those side ones which come with it. How 
is that, Margey ? " 

a$o answer, but a long look up at the 
wall. 

" What is it ? Oh, again I see ; that lovely 






FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 27 

picture of Andrea del Sarto's. Then I con- 
clude I am to speak of the Child Jesus. The 
tight-clinging squeeze tells me yes." 

Well : First, then, let us put the Holy Child 
in his right place. I'm going to take Mar- 
gey's hint, and talk to you of the ways of 
representing Him, and the beautiful visions 
which art has given to our race, with Him 
as their subject ; but, before I do, let us see 
how we ought to feel towards the Holy 
Child. 

Notice, then, dear ones, that the Holy Child 
has no existence now. You can't pray to the 
Child Jesus, because there is no such person. 
It was simply a former state of Him, who now 
reigns, perfect man, in his Father's glory. 
He himself is for us what He is now, not what 
He was once. If you or I pray to Jesus, we 
can only pray to Him at the right hand of 
God, exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour. To 
pray to Him as a child, to pray to Him as on 
the cross, is to pray to a mere thought, a mere 



28 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

fiction. Such, states of his are, you see, not 
objects of adoration for us ; but they are most 
blessed objects of remembrance and of con- 
templation. Jesus as a child : behold one of 
the most beautiful objects on which the imagi- 
nation of man can be fixed and employed. The 
only human child who has ever been sinless 
and spotless. All children are comparatively 
sinless : but this one was absolutelv so. And 
then there are several things which give the 
contemplation even more of human interest. 
On the one hand, this child was born of a 
human mother. As a child is like its mother, 
so on the other hand it may be said, when the 
child is the principal thing to be thought of, 
that the mother is like the child. Something 
of the pure and holy and lovely countenance 
which this flower of children had, must his 
mother also have had, and must have thereby 
been the flower of maidens. And so, my 
darlings, you have at once the materials for 
the loveliest of all creations of human art. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 29 

Foremost among all the pictures in the world 
for beauty are those of Jesus, the flower of 
children, and Mary, the flower of maidens and 
mothers. Almost every one who has travelled 
has got together some favourite forms of this 
lovely group. On the walls of this room are 
no less than twelve, by different painters, 
collected during almost as many wanderings 
of mine.* 

Before we speak of them we will mention 
another source of intense interest in the figure 
of the Child Jesus. In that infant form dwelt 
the Grodhead ; and the greatest and noblest 
of painters have ever borne this in mind ; have 
made the baby-face, while all human in its 



* Our drawing-rooms at the Deanery were full of remem- 
brances of our foreign tours, photographs and prints of 
many well-known pictures by the great masters, a copy of 
one of Francia's paintings in the gallery of Prince Borghese, 
Borne ; a Virgin and Child, by Vivarini, bought at Venice 
in 1846 ; a Magdalene, by Sassoferrato, found at a picture- 
stall beneath the shadow of Milan Cathedral in 1841, and 
others too numerous to mention here. — Ei>. 



30 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 

tender beauty, yet, as well, something more 
than human. Look at that first and grandest 
of all such representations, the " Madonna del 
Sisto " of Rafael. Yes, Margey, there it is, 
that large splendid lithograph, which I shall 
never repent having bought when I was at 
Dresden, where the immortal picture is. Look 
at the glorious infant. Does not the very 
Godhead burst from those lips and those 
wonderful large eyes ? jSTo other painter ever 
imagined a face like that. If you saw such 
a child as that, you would almost say, as the 
beloved disciple said to Peter, " It is the 
Lord ! " And the mother, too. How remark- 
able it is that Rafael, living among all the 
error and nonsense which Rome has accumu- 
lated round her, should have painted such an 
exquisitely simple form, a form and face saying 
nothing but, " Behold the handmaid of the 
Lord ! " And yet there is no want of gran- 
deur : she knows that she has been the mother 
of the Divine Child — every feature speaks of it 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 31 

— and before the mighty truth she is subdued 
and humble. INTo such woman has ever before 
been painted, nor since. The hour which con- 
ceived the Madonna del Sisto was the noontide 
point of human genius. 

Now let me point out, darlings, one thing in 
the representations of the Holy Child. He is 
all pure — without sin : in his blessed body 
there is no room for shame. And all the 
greatest painters, in their greatest pictures, 
have taken account of this. As our first 
parents in Eden, so the Infant Jesus is wholly 
naked. There is no reason, when we represent 
the ideal of Him, for veiling that human form 
which in itself, and apart from sin, is very 
good. Bear this in mind, for we shall have 
to recur to it when we speak of the group 
enlarged. 

Now next, for we are yet concerned only 
with the mother and child, look up at that ex- 
quisite but quaint idea of Francisco Francia's. 
The mother stands in a field of flowers, looking 



32 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

down with admiration and reverence on her 
Child, who is lying on the green sward, look- 
ing up at her with a face beaming with love 
and heavenly benignity. The picture will 
show what variety there was in the conceptions 
of the beautiful group ; and you will be glad 
to hear that between this painter and the 
young Rafael there was the closest and most 
admiring friendship. 

Another of his there is on the wall — a lovely 
Madonna and Child, from the gallery of Prince 
Borghese at Rome. It is almost singular 
among those which we have here, for it is in 
colours. I saw a water-colour painter making 
that copy in the gallery, and I bought it. It 
is Francia's very best. Notice the exquisite 
colours, the deep crimson of the Virgin's inner 
vest, overlaid by the rich blue of the outer 
robe which envelopes her head, and flows down 
to her feet. Then remark the heavenly clear- 
ness of her complexion shared by the blessed 
Child who sits in bright nakedness on her lap, 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 1$ 

resting his hand in hers, while her other clasps 
Him round in closest affection. See also how 
Francia falls beneath Rafael in the full expres- 
sion of both human and divine. There were 
thirty-four years difference between them : 
representing thirty-four years, as you will see 
when you come to read the history of art, of 
great and rapid progress. 

But now look up, little women, and gaze for 
awhile at that quaint picture, with gold ground 
and heavy ornamented frame. There sits a 
stiff Virgin, certainly without eny claim to 
beauty, with a queer indented glory round her 
head, and her hands up, as if in adoration ; 
and on her knees a perfectly lovely Child, 
asleep, painted with the most elaborate care, 
almost like enamel on porcelain. That little 
picture I bought at Venice in 1846, and it 
was certified to me as being by Bartolomeo 
Vivarini, i.e. as painted about 1480. It may 
serve to you as a specimen of the hard, early 
style of that Venetian School, not without 



34 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 

great dawning promise of tenderness, and the 
good symptom of diligent and religious care- 
fulness. 

If I were to take you back, Margey, to the 
Madonnas of Rafael, we might spend all night 
in descriptions ; but there you have several of 
them, and in my box of photographs many 
more. It is only wonderful how he devised so 
many attitudes and circumstances under which 
to place them — all beautiful, though not all 
equally beautiful. One of the most lovely is 
that known as the " Madonna di Gran Duca," 
now in the Royal Palace at Florence. It 
seems as if the painter had poured his whole 
soul of tenderness into this group. The 
Divine Child is sitting on his mother's hand, 
the lines of his figure almost coinciding with 
those of hers. Contrary to Rafael's usual 
practice, He is wound about the breast with a 
band of full drapery. She looks down on 
Him with a countenance full of reverence and 
love, while with her other hand she steadies 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 35 

his body, holding it under the arm. His little 
hand rests lovingly on her bosom. 

And now, my darlings, I think we had 
better reserve the larger groups of the Holy 
Family, of which there are some very lovely 
examples, for another of our evenings. 

I see it is getting late, and the Laceys, poor 
things, who have just now small comfort at 
home, are coming in to prayers, to help us 
sing, "Unto us a Child is born." 



IV. 



"YTES, Jessie, as you observe, that must have 
been a very blessed home at Nazareth. 
How little we think of those thirty years ! 
Thirty out of thirty-three — why, according 
to what we were learning yesterday in frac- 
tions, that is ten elevenths of our Lord's 
whole life on earth, isn't it ? Certainly the 
three that remained were much more im- 
portant, because they contained his teaching 
and his death : but it seems out of all 
reason, to entirely neglect the thirty which 
preceded. 

The great Christian painters have not done 
so. They have loved to represent the Holy 
Family as they were at Nazareth when Jesus 
was a child, and when John, who you know 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 37 

was six months older, may have been his 
playmate and companion. I am going to de- 
scribe to you several of their representations 
of this beautiful group. Yes, Margey, I feel 
the squeeze. What ? Only a whisper ? Well, 
never mind, provided I can hear. 

Yes, no doubt you are right, little one : 
Margey asks, why the brothers and sisters 
are not painted too? Well, little lass, I am 
afraid the old Catholic people did not think 
much of them. They would have it, you 
see, that the mother of our Lord had none 
other but Him, and they managed to make 
out that those whom He called his brothers 
and sisters were in reality his cousins. But 
if they were, then their own mother was 
living, and it seems unaccountable if she 
were, that they should always be mentioned 
with their aunt, and not with their mother. 
There are several other reasons too, against 
this curious evasion of the plain sense of 
Scripture : one of which is that, at a time 



38 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

after the Twelve Apostles had been chosen, 
among whom according to these people are 
two of our Lord's brethren (or cousins), it is 
said " For neither did his brethren believe in 
Him/' Your question, little woman, has just 
anticipated a remark I was going to make 
before the end of the evening ; that the pic- 
ture of the family at Nazareth has yet to be 
painted, and a very beautiful one it would be. 
Those sisters of our Lord, what were they ? 
How did they think of Him? Of this we 
know nothing. 

There doubtless was another reason why no 
more than our Lord and St. John among the 
children are represented : and that is, that 
they two are the only persons full of deep 
meaning to us Christians, The rest may have 
been very holy and good : but they are 
nothing to us in themselves. They have no 
part in the history of Redemption. Whereas 
John was the great Forerunner, the pointer 
to our Lord as the Lamb of God. And thus 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 39 

lie finds his place always in the symbolism 
of the picture. 

So we will now speak of those beautiful 
groups which we have, and will leave off 
complaining that we have not more. We 
begin of course with Rafael. And the first 
which I will mention, because one 'of the most 
infantine, is that favourite of yours, little 
Margey, hanging on the left side of the fire- 
place. The Child Jesus is lying asleep on a 
piece of drapery, and his mother is lifting a 
veil from. off Him and showing Him to the 
little St. John, who kneels in childish ad- 
miration, his lips apart and his hands joined. 
Certainly there hardly can be anything more 
peaceful and beautiful. The sleeping Infant 
is the same Divine Child as we have opposite 
in the Madonna del Sisto, with the wondrous 
face subdued and softened by the human in- 
firmity of sleep. His figure is the very es- 
sence of repose — "full of rest from head to 
feet." Still there is one thing about this 



40 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

sweet picture which interferes with its purity 
and simplicity. Though the Child is the 
same as in Rafael's greatest picture, the 
Mother is not. She is crowned, and thereby 
a concession is made to the superstition of 
Rome which degrades her from her dignity 
of humility, and crowns her as a heathen 
goddess, calling her the Queen of Heaven. In 
consequence of this peculiarity, the picture is 
known as the "Diadem." It is in the gal- 
lery of the Louvre at Paris. 

Isovr next observe that other hanging on 
the right of the fire. Here we have the 
blessed Mother sitting in a lovelv garden with 
flowers springing around ; at her right knee 
stands the Holy Child, in purest nakedness : 
his left arm rests lovingly on her left hand, 
which lies in her lap : His right hand touches 
her knee, while her right hand embraces Him 
under the right shoulder. He is looking up 
at her with a look of unutterable love, while 
she casts down her full eyes on Him in love 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 41 

mingled with reverence. Next to the Ma- 
donna del Sisto, this seems to me the most 
beautiful figure of the Virgin ; it is so simple 
in faith and adoration, yet so dignified, and 
thoroughly worthy of her exalted relation 
to God manifest in the flesh. The little St. 
John kneels on the ground on one knee, but 
it always has appeared to me in rather a 
constrained attitude. As we now have the 
picture there is something not altogether in- 
telligible about his face ; but the painting 
has been done over and ovei* again since 
Rafael's time, and probably the face has been 
damaged by some inferior hand. Notice in 
this, as in most other groups of the kind, that 
whereas the sinless Child is without covering, 
the other, one of us, is girt with drapery. 
This picture, commonly known as " La Belle 
Jardiniere/' is also in the Louvre at Paris. 

The third of Rafael's groups which I will 
notice is given in this large photograph from 
the picture at Florence. I will read you a 



42 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

description of it, which I wrote five years 
ago : — * 

" One picture, in the Tribune of the Uflizi 
Gallery, especially struck me. The Madonna 
del Cardellino (our Lady .of the Goldfinch) 
is one of the loveliest works of Rafael. The 
Virgin is sitting on a rock, in a flowery 
meadow. Behind are the usual light and 
feathery trees, growing on the bank of a 
stream, which passes off to the left in a 
rocky bend, and is crossed by a bridge of a 
single arch. To the right the opposite bank 
slopes upward in a gentle glade, across which 
is a village backed by two distant mountain- 
peaks. 

" In front of the sitting matronly figure 
of the Virgin are the holy children, our Lord 
and the Baptist, one on either side of her 
right knee. She has been reading, and the 
approach of St. John has caused her to look 

* See the Dean's " Letters from Abroad," chap. yii. 
p. 205, second edition. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 43 

off her book (which is open in her left hand) 
at the new comer, which she does with a 
look of holy love and. gentleness, at the same 
time caressingly drawing him to her with 
her right hand, which touches his little body 
under the right arm. In both hands, which 
rest across the Virgin's knee, he holds a 
captive goldfinch, which he has brought with 
childish glee as an offering to the Holy 
Child. The Infant Jesus, standing between 
his mother's knees, with one foot placed on 
her foot, and her hand with the open book 
close above his shoulder, regards the Baptist 
with an upward look of gentle solemnity, at 
the same time that He holds His bent hand 
over the head of the bird. 

" So much for mere description. The inner 
feeling of the picture, the motive which has 
prompted it, has surely hardly ever been sur- 
passed. The blessed Virgin, in casting her 
arm around the infant St. John, looks down on 
him with a holy complacency for the testi- 






44 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

mony which he is to bear to her Son. Notice 
the human boyish glee with which the Baptist 
presents the captured goldfinch, and, on the 
other hand, the divine look, even of majesty 
and creative love, with which the Infant Jesus, 
laying his hand on the head of the bird, half 
reproves St. John, as it were saying, 'Love 
them, and hurt them not/ Notice too the 
unfrightened calm of the bird itself, passive 
under the hand of its loving Creator. All 
these are features of the very highest power of 
human art. Again, in accompaniments, all is as 
it should be. The Virgin, modestly and beau- 
tifully draped : St. John, girt about the loins, 
not only in accord with his well-known pro- 
phetic costume, but also as partaking of sinful 
humanity, and therefore needing such cincture : 
the Child Redeemer, with a slight cincture, 
just to suggest motherly care, but not over 
the part usually concealed, as indeed it never 
ought to be, seeing that in Him was no sin, 
and that it is this spotless purity which is ever 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 45 

the leading idea in representations of Him as 
an infant. Notice too his foot, beautifully 
resting on that of his mother : the unity 
between them being thus wonderfully, though 
slightly, kept up. Her eye has just been 
dwelling on the book of the Prophecies open in 
her hand ; and thus the spectator's 'thought is 
ruled in accordance with the high mission of 
the Holy One of God x and thrown forward into 
the grand and blessed future. It is a holy and 
wonderful picture : I had not seen any in 
Italy which had struck or refreshed me more/' 

Rafael painted many, many more such 
groups, which I 'should like to show my dar- 
lings, where they shine in ail their heavenly 
colours, some day. But we must leave the 
Prince of Painters now, and notice two or 
..roups of the Holy Family, which 
are on our own walls. 

And rirst among them comes one which I 
have hung i most conspicuous place in 

the library, because it was intimately con- 



46 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

nected with my own childhood. In my 
father's study, over the fire, was that Holy 
Family, by Andrea del Sarto.* Day by day, at 
my lessons, I used to gaze on that lovely figure 
of the Divine Child, standing in the front 
of the picture ; his right knee bent on his 
mother's lap, who is half sitting, half-kneeling 
on the ground, his left hand passing across 
his body, and laid lovingly on the drapery of 
her bosom. To his left, and to the right of 
the picture, St. Elizabeth, a venerable matron, 
holds under the left arm with one hand, and 
on the right shoulder with the other, St. John, 
a lad of some seven or eight years, girt with 
his leathern girdle ; his right hand, which 
passes under his mother's arm, is lifted in a 
pointing attitude, as bespeaking attention to 
his proclamation of the Saviour. Behind the 
group, on the left of the picture, is an angel, 
with an instrument of music ; and behind him 

* This picture was hung over the mantel-piece in his 
own library at the Deanery. See " Life," p. 479. — Ed. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 47 

again, not very clearly expressed, the hand and 
back of the head of another. The faces are 
not of the high order of Rafael's, but still 
very beautiful, and evidently aiming at the 
same effect. 

This pointing out of the Lord by his infant 
Forerunner is very commonly indicated in 
groups of the Holy Family. You will see it 
very marked in that lovely picture by Scar- 
sellino di Ferrara on the opposite wall. The 
two children, both naked, are lying on a green 
sward with trees in the background. Both 
have been asleep, but St. John has awakened, 
and half sits up, pointing at the Saviour. The 
expression of his round boyish face is charm- 
ing : his full eyes dilate with the great mes- 
sage of which his newly awakened conscious- 
ness is full: while the Divine Child lies 
peacefully slumbering by him, his left arm 
hanging relaxed over the advanced knee of the 
elder child. The original is at Munich. 

One more picture, Margey, and those heavy- 



48 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

eyelids shall seek their pillow. But that one 
I cannot possibly pass over, if it were merely 
that you may have something by which to 
vindicate one of the greatest of painters when 
you hear him abused as he sometimes deserves. 
Ah, I see both the faces, and mamma's too, 
looking at the opposite wall. Yes, it is that 
group of four children by Rubens, that I 
mean. Hardly a purer and lovelier picture of 
the kind exists. It is allegory mingled with 
matter of fact. The little naked figures on 
the ground are four. First our Lord on the 
right, sitting with his left side towards us. 
The clearness and purity of flesh painting and 
colour of his body have surely never been sur- 
passed. Facing Him, but with his back to us, 
8t. John is turning to give heed to something 
that the Lord is telling him. His face is rapt 
in earnest attention, and his eyes look into the 
Face opposite with wonder and deepest love : 
the Lord is evidently laying forth to him that 
which he must proclaim and suffer for his 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 49 

sake. With his right hand He affectionately 
caresses St. John's cheek, while He regards 
him with a look of superior wisdom and love. 
Between the two are seen the face and 
shoulders of a little girl, known to be such by 
the arrangement of the hair. On the left, an 
infant angel is bringing a lamb, over which 
St. John casts his left arm, his right resting on 
the right thigh of our Lord. The meaning of 
this is plain. The little girl is the spouse, the 
Church. She holds in her hand a bunch of 
grapes, the well-known emblem* of the Holy 
Communion. The lamb serves to indicate 
the whole deep mystery of the atoning 
Lamb of God, which, as the Baptist's special 
message and proclamation, is being declared 
by the Lord, and as ( signified by the arm 
laid over the lamb, recognised by the Fore- 
runner. 

There seem to be two originals of this won- 
derful picture. The German lithograph on the 
wall I bought at Berlin in 1857, after seeing 



SO FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

the painting in the gallery there ; and another 
was exhibited the other day at Leeds by Sir 
John Rarusden. This latter was engraved in 
the Illustrated London News of October 31, 
last year.* The group is, to my mind, not 
improved in it by an enormous canopy of fruit 
and flowers by Seghen, which does not exist in 
the Berlin original. 

Well, darlings, I really have run on with 
this interesting theme, till we are all well 
tired. So we will not sing to-night, but re- 
serve ourselves for a grand chorus, with a new 
subject, next Sunday. 



1868. 



V. 



rpHE next thing about the Child Jesus ? 
Well, I suppose you don't mean his being 
taken into Egypt, or presented in the Temple, 
or adored by the Magi, — because all these are 
hardly things about Him, but, taking his 
human course as that in which He is mani- 
fested, these are rather circumstances happen- 
ing to Him than events with which He was 
Himself concerned. 

The next thing about Him — well, JMargey, 
what shall we say ? I know what occurs to 
me. I wonder whether we are agreed in 
this. You mean that staying behind in the 
Temple : is that it ? 

Well, then, of that let us speak. It is an 
incident full of interest in many ways. I 



52 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

need not go over all the particulars of it ; 
but will only just bring out one or two points 
which you, darlings, will feel, and are not 
commonly dwelt on. 

The first of these is the marvellous way 
in which the Holy Child was trusted. When 
the caravan was made up on leaving Jeru- 
salem, his parents do not seem to have given 
themselves one anxious thought about Him. 
The question, where He was, never arose till 
after the day's journey. " Then came still 
evening on/' of which " the ancient poetess 
singeth " that it brings the child to the 
mother.* We may imagine the tent set up, 
and the evening meal prepared, as Eastern 
travellers describe it to this day. How many 
there were within it we cannot say. We be- 
lieve that there were many brothers and sisters 
of the Holy Child ; but as all were necessarily 
younger than Himself, none of them would 

* Sappho. See " Chapters on the Poets of Ancient 
Greece," by Henry ^Alford, p e 75. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 53 

accompany their parents on this journey : 
unless indeed there were an infant which 
could not be separated from its mother. Per- 
haps there were others, too, who were nearly 
related to the Holy Family : but from what 
follows it would appear that none occupied 
the same tent with them. So that perhaps 
Joseph and Mary were alone. The sun dropped 
burning below the western plain, or dipped 
under the sea-line, if they were in the hill 
country : but still He came not. So com- 
pletely did they trust Him that they waited 
till the great stars blazed out above : still He 
came not. Then they went out into the neigh- 
bouring tents and made inquiry. " He is 
sure to be in one of them," they said one to 
another: "for all love Him as their own, and 
He is fond of talking to them in his strange 
gentle way about great and holy things, so 
that He and they both take no note of time 
when so employed." 

One tent after another was searched, but He 



54 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

appeared not. Even then we may well suppose 
that distrust was not allowed to enter their 
minds. Not only had they both knowledge 
of his wonderful character, not only had his 
mother laid up in her heart all the mys- 
terious matters regarding his birth, and the 
prophecies which were uttered respecting Him, 
but in all this experience of his childhood, 
and his boyhood, He had never once deceived, 
never once disobeyed them. He might have 
said to them as He said to his enemies twenty 
years after, " Which of you convince th me of 
sin ? " 

This being so, it was natural that sorrow 
should have filled their hearts. You, darlings, 
hardly yet know how sharp a pang is the first 
possibility of suspicion of one whom you have 
deeply loved : when the heart refuses to form 
to itself the darkening thought that is waiting 
to take shape, and we say " it must be right," 
when we nearly half feel that something is 
grievously wrong. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 55 

Some such, pang may have rent the breasts 
of Joseph and the blessed mother that lonely 
night as they lay sleepless in the tent. We 
may well conceive that again and again, sepa- 
rate and together they joined in prayer to 
Him who had given the precious gift that it 
might be theirs again. 

Oh what a feeling this is, the sense that one 
is lost — not lost, as those that are gone from 
us are lost — but lost, perhaps never to be 
found ! 

I remember, when I was at Quebec Chapel, 
in London, a very dear friend * preached one 
of my Friday Lent sermons on the text, 
"Whosoever will come after me, let him denv 
himself, and take up his cross and follow me." 
He insisted on the fact, that every follower 
of the Blessed Lord has a cross to bear — he 
told us of the frequently sudden coming upon 
this cross in our way — when we least were 

* The late Rev. J. H. Gurney, Rector of St. Mary's, 
Bryan ston Square.— Ed. 



56 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

thinking of it, we turned a corner, and there it 
lay, to be taken up and borne. 

The service ended and we came into the 
vestry. There stood his eldest girl, pale and 
breathless — " Oh, papa, baby is lost in the 
Park ! She strayed away from nurse, and 
can't be found." " I little thought," said he, 
turning to me, " that at the first corner I 
should find the cross ! " 

And now Joseph and Mary had found their 
cross. " Sorrowing " — it is her own word — - 
sorrowing they sought Him — turning back 
from the tents of their companions at the early 
dawn. 

A fanciful Roman Catholic saint, Bonaven- 
tura,* in whose meditations are some beautiful 
thoughts amidst much that is nonsensical, 
suggests that the blessed mother may have 



* That good Bishop of Albano, at whose funeral, a.d. 
1274, the Pope, and cardinals, and five hundred bishops 
attended, and also the Patriarchs of Constantinople and 
Antioch. — En. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 57 

thought that the same Father who had given 
Him to her may have again taken Him away. 
But this, in the face of the prophecies to 
Joseph and to herself, could hardly be. Much 
rather might she perhaps have suspected, that 
that mysterious mission, of which those pro- 
phecies had faintly hinted, may have begun : 
that He may have betaken Himself to the 
desert, there to await the time of his mani- 
festation to Israel. 

At all events, Jerusalem was the point at 
which their search must begin. And now 
from one wonder we come to another. We 
have seen how implicitly they trusted the 
Holy Child. But if we were to assume from 
this that all his heart and purposes lay open 
to them, we should be wrong. And this part 
of the history reveals to us in a wonderful 
manner the human character of our Lord. 
We read on one occasion in St. John, that He 
" did not commit himself unto " the Jews who 
came up unto the feast at Jerusalem : and 



58 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

even so had been his practice through his 
younger years. Pie was a pure, unsmiling 
child — an affectionate and obedient child — 
but at the same time a reserved child. Words 
of comfort, words of peace, words of tender- 
ness, He must always have had for those 
about Him : but they were only such as 
He pleased to utter : they came from a 
depth within which no one knew : they were 
parts of a store which human thought never 
measured. 

How do we know this on the present occa- 
sion ? Simply by this circumstance : that 
they, who had been with Him now twelve 
years, never for three days thought of looking 
for Him in the place to which all his boyish 
enthusiasm tended. The house of his heavenly 
Father had never been evident as an object 
of his love or admiration. Long, Ions: years 
at Nazareth had the desire been growing 
in Him, to dwell in the house of the Lord, 
and behold the fair beauty of the Temple : 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 59 

long had He yearned after the converse of 
holy men whose time and toil were spent over 
the Law of God : but of this not a word had 
escaped Him. 

And this interests us not only as being a 
trait of Him, but as so completely identifying 
Him with the boy of all times and countries. 
Nothing is more common than for the ruling 
passion of a boy's soul to be thus kept in re- 
serve — father, and even mother, not having a 
dream of it — till some day it leaps forth full- 
grown, and amazes all who behold. 

This is often so with a boy's plans about 
his destination in life : but, it is true, not 
so often with regard to favourite habits and 
haunts. It conveys to us a stronger idea of 
the reserve which must have been the charac- 
teristic of the Holy Child : and serves to mark 
that character as no common one, even in its 
quiet and private manifestation. This mixture 
of affectionate tenderness and habitual reserve 
can only exist in the great and few spirits 



6o FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

of the very highest order : and that these 
did coexist in the Child Jesus, at once points 
Him out as unlike the common run of the sons 
of men. 

But, even allowing for all this reserve, it 
does seem passing strange that Joseph and 
Mary never during those three days seem to 
have thought of the Temple. We might ask, 
Where did they seek Him all that time ? and 
what put into their thoughts at last to try 
the place where He was ? They perhaps went 
to the family in whose house they had cele- 
brated the Passover. Was it the same as that 
pointed out by the Lord twenty years after 
when he said, " Go into the city to such a 
man and say, The Master saith, I will cele- 
brate the Passover at thine house with my 
disciples " ? There they might seek in vain ; 
and then perhaps they branched out among 
those who had been their fellows in the sacred 
feast, but equally in vain. One day passed, 
and another, and another: and there was 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 61 

doubtless the hope deferred, that maketh the 
heart sick : more and more anxiety, at last 
fading off into the blankness of despair. 

At last, we may well imagine, a rumour 
reaches them — that it was so long in reaching 
them may at once serve to refute the legends 
about the early connection of his mother with 
the temple of the High Priest — a rumour that 
a wonderful boy was in the Temple, sitting in 
the midst of the doctors, hearing them and 
asking them questions : and that all were 
astonished at his understanding- and his an- 
swers. Who could this be but their lost one ? 
That understanding — those answers — how 
often had they astonished those parents at 
home ! How often, we may well imagine, had 
they said one to another, " What rabbi could 
have answered more wisely ? " 

We all know how many wise things are said 
by children. Tou, Jessie and Margey, in your 
time, have both of you been utterers of wise 
sayings, such sayings as you will never, never 



62 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 

utter again. Jeremy Taylor* says that children 
suffer, when they are in pain or sorrow, by 
direct pressure, as a pillar supports a weight. 
The idea is yery beautiful ; and we might 
expand it further, and say that when children 
think, they think by direct contact with truth, 
without those side yiews and obscuring com- 
pensations which disturb their thoughts in 
after years. So that we sometimes haye more 
liying truth, direct from God's Spirit, in the 
saying of a child, than in ten mature verdicts 
of grown-up men. 

And if this be so with you and others who 
grow up in imperfection and under all the 
beclouding influences of selfish temper and 
departures from truth, how must it haye been 
with Him who neyer sinned ? 

TThen He asked a question of the doctors of 
the law, it was not for display, it was not from 

* "Who was said to have devotion for a cloister, learning 
for a university, and wit for a virtuoso college. He died 
in Ireland, 1667, bishop of Down and Connor.— Ed. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 63, 

idle curiosity, it was not for the love of victory 
in argument : it was the earnest reaching- forth 
after truth of a soul which basked in truth : 
the inquirer courted no flattery, deserved no 
rebuke, stirred no jealousy, overstepped no 
modesty ; it was as if Truth herself, radiant as 
the bow of God, had stepped uncldthed from 
her veil, and won all hearts by her smile. 

Let us look somewhat more, darlings, at 
that wondrous assembly. Yes, Margey, there 
it hangs * before us, but without its glorious 
colour, as Holman Hunt gave it forth from the 
year's study of his earnest soul. I wish you 
could have seen the picture, all aglow with 
those wonderful hues — somewhat, perhaps, too 
rainbow-like and shifty in gleams, but yet no 
tint without meaning, and all conspiring to 
one of the most glorious of effects. 

It was some such assembly as the painter 
has there represented. The grand old rabbi, 

* The Dean wrote this description with the engraving 
placed by his side on a chair. — Ed. 



64 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

whose winters mounted to a century, their 
snowy marks on his scanty beard, and their 
film over his sightless eyes — how he clasps the 
great scroll of the law, the study of his life, 
and the fathomless well of his ripened wisdom ! 
The aged compeer at his side laying his hand 
■on his arm, is setting forth to him the reason 
why the wise and holy talk of the young 
peasant from Galilee has of a sudden ceased. 
And next to him is a young teacher, his face 
full of intelligence, his brow contracted with 
anxious thought as over some answer from 
which the very soul of righteousness had 
looked forth, or over some question which the 
collective wisdom of rabbidom was all too poor 
to furnish with a reply. And so we pass on, 
to some faces which look secular, and even 
some which seem, but probably are not, void of 
meaning, till our eyes reach the right-hand, or 
principal group of the picture. 

And here what shall we say ? I know that 
tastes differ among us on this group ; I know 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 65 

also that my own feeling has not been always 
the same about it : but I also feel that the 
artist had immense difficulties to contend with, 
and that he has surmounted them not by 
pandering to conventionality, but by patiently 
studying and then idealizing nature. 

Let us take them in inverse order and im- 
portance. 

The figure and expression of Joseph are, to 
me, faultless. There is no assumption of im- 
portance in them, as neither ought there to 
be : but the great joy of having found Him 
who had been lost is mingled with a serene 
satisfaction at the place and employ in which 
He has been found : and thus this manly peace- 
ful face sets, as it were, the tone of the group. 

Of the Blessed Mother more must be said : 
more which may call, and which may be called, 
in question. 

The expression is as of one earnestly and 
passionately pleading.; as we might imagine 
her to have done, had we not been told ex- 

F 



66 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

pressly that she did not. The account given 
in St. Luke certainly does not lead us to think 
that she thus earnestly and closely whispered 
in the ear of her Son. There is in that narra- 
tive a majesty of motherhood, which I fail to 
discover here. Perhaps it may be said, that 
the artist has altogether translated the narra- 
tive into detail ; that the saying in St. Luke 
is that to which all her dealing with Him 
amounted, rather than any one portion of it ; 
that we can hardly imagine the joy of finding, 
the intense interest in the situation, the desire 
to win Him back again — all venting them- 
selves in those few and balanced words; and 
that though the Evangelist is faithful to the 
summary of fact, the artist has seized on one 
of the expressions of nature of which that 
summary was made up. It may be so. Paint- 
ing, we know, is tied to a moment, and must 
give an outward act done. History is tied 
merely to truth, and truth may be the total of 
a great many acts. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 67 

But perhaps all this is too hard for my little 
women ; and at any rate you will see in the 
attitude and expression of the Blessed Mother 
what, if it represent not the whole sacred 
narrative, must have been gone through before 
that whole was attained. 

But now we come to speak of the figure of 
the Holy Child Himself. And I hardly know 
how to praise this too highly. It seems to me 
to have just that mingled look of human boy- 
hood, and divine yearning for higher things 
than human, which we should expect, but look 
for in vain, in any representation of the youth- 
ful Jesus. It is found in the Infant of the 
Madonna del Sisto, and as has been said, in one 
or two other of Rafael's ; and, as far as I 
know, in those only. That the earnest desire 
to be "among his Father's matters" is here 
somewhat prominent, is hardly to be blamed : 
but none can say that the rising resolution to 
check that desire, and to go down to Nazareth 
and be obedient to them, is not also abundantly 



.68 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

expressed. There is one little incident of tlie 
Lord's posture which, has always struck me 
as very beautiful ; the playing of the right 
hand with the buckle of the band. It exactly 
expresses the meeting of two currents of feel- 
ing. One can see in this as in the face, 
the truant interest in the disputation of the 
doctors, wavering before the strong return of 
self-denying duty ; while, at the same time, 
there look out wonderfully from the eyes the 
thoughts that come from otherwhere than this 
our earth. 

Of the accessories of the picture it is after 
this hardly worth while to speak. According 
to the artist it. is evidently full day. "Work- 
men are shaping a stone outside. A beggar is 
laid at the gate to ask alms of them that came 
in. Now I had in my own mind always 
imagined it evening ; " After three days they 
found Him in the Temple." Whether the 
doctors had the custom of sitting on there 
till the evening, I am not sufficiently ac- 



FIRESIDE OHMILIES. 69 

quainted with. Jewish practices to be able to 
say ; but the " after three days " seems to 
point this way. Perhaps the wonderful under- 
standing and answers of the Divine Boy may 
have kept the dignified conclave beyond its 
ordinary time of sitting. 

Leaving the picture, we may finish by say- 
ing, that it is full of interest to think what 
the Lord may have seen on that his youthful 
visit which led to bis words and acts years 
further on. 

Then He may have noted "frith boyish in- 
dignation the unhallowed practice of buying 
and selling in the house of prayer, which 
twenty years after prompted one of his first, 
and again one of his last acts of summary 
vindication of the holy law of his Father. 
There he may have noticed the Pharisee 
standing and uttering his self-satisfied prayers, 
and the poor publican standing afar off and 
beating his breast in contrition. 

The conclusion of the beautiful story is as 



;o FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

teaching as all else is. " He went down to 
Nazareth with them, and was subject unto 
them." His holy burning zeal was curbed 
and repressed. " Even Christ pleased not 
Himself." The outbreak of enthusiasm had 
been an infirmity, not a sin : and now the 
well-balanced spirit again righted and streng- 
thened itself: the course, which begun by 
becoming obedient, returned into its proper 
channel. 

And to us the wonderful part of such obedi- 
ence is, to think of its duration. Not for a 
month, not for a year, but for eighteen long- 
years was he subject unto them. He became 
" the carpenter." Doubtless many a house in 
Nazareth witnessed his humble subjection to 
his reputed father's trade. One of the earliest 
fathers, Justin Martyr, tells us that He made 
ploughs and yokes. 

There was some years ago a striking picture 
of Herbert's, of our Lord, as a lad of fifteen 
or sixteen, in Joseph's workshop. He is no 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 71 

longer a beautiful Child, but a thin workman 
youth. He is, as is the custom with workmen 
there, naked, except for a cincture round the 
loins ; and the painter's effort has been rather 
to pourtray the bodily fatigue incident to his 
life of unflinching obedience, combined with 
the higher purpose manifested in his holy 
looks. Perhaps the painful part of the picture 
is carried too far, as is the practice with the 
school to which Herbert attached himself : but 
it was a picture which entered that night into 
one's waking thoughts ; and that is, at least 
in my little court of criticism within, no small 
praise. 

There is another picture of Herbert's, be- 
longing to this his period of boyish obedience : 
I am not sure whether or not to a time before 
the incident we have been dealing with to- 
night. The Child JeSus is passing along 
Joseph's shop, when suddenly his eye falls on 
two chips of wood, accidentally fallen one over 
the other in the form of a cross. He pauses, 



72 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

looking down on them with, a solemn air. 
His Blessed Mother stands in the doorway, 
contemplating Him with an air of conscious 
earnestness. 

And even so ends our present narrative. 
"But his mother kept all these things, and 
pondered them in her heart/' 

Of that we shall have more to say another 
time. 

Now for prayers ; and we will try " The 
Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to 
his temple : " and the grand chorus, " And He 
shall purify," which follows. 



VI. 



GO you want me to say something about that 
first miracle in Cana of Galilee. Well, it 
is a scene my mind often dwells upon. I love 
to think of our Blessed Lord among the com- 
mon incidents of life. You two darlings have 
as yet young fresh hearts, and are easily moved: 
but by the time you have been fifty years 
knocking about in this heartless world, you 
will find the gristle got very hard and callous 
about most of the places that are soft now, 
and it will take something unusual to stir 
that salt fountain inside. And it's strange 
what kind of things do it, when nothing else 
will. There's that sweetest bit in all old 
heathen poetry, that I tried to read to you, 
Margey, the other day, where the great grand 



74 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

warrior lifts his little soft child, having taken 
off the nodding plume which made it shrink 
back into its nurse's arms, and kisses it, and 
prays for it.* Well, I used at school to think 
that very commonplace if not almost childish : 
but I never can read it now without a hot tear 
brimming over. And when anything at all 
like it happens in real life : when incongrui- 
ties from two opposite sides of humanity meet 
on humanity's common ground, the same takes 
place. Other incidents lose their freshness, 
but these never. 

And one of these is, our Blessed Lord at 
a marriage. That bridegroom and bride, 
those cousins and gossips, I suppose they were 
just common ordinary people. I suppose the 
bridegroom had arrayed himself in his best, 
and the bride had been decked by her mother : 
one of the pretty maidens of the neighbour- 
hood of Nazareth, of some twelve or thirteen 

* Hectors parting with his child: Homer's " Iliad," 
book iv. — Ed. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 75 

years — nay, Margey, don't start and look 
so surprised, for it was so, and is now in those 
parts — and there was all the talk that there 
always is at such times — don't let us be afraid 
of imagining it, for the more real are our 
ideas of all about Him the nearer shall we 
approach to Himself. The looks of the bride- 
groom — this for the damsels — those of the 
bride and her maids, this for the men ; and 
perchance the last news from the petty war 
the other side Jordan, or the damage done by 
last week's hail, or the prospect of this year's 
vintage : or perhaps some talk of lucky or un- 
lucky omens that day, and argument, backed 
by sayings quoted from learned Rabbis : and 
appeal to the local scribe, or priest, or Pharisee, 
ready in traditionary lore. All this would no 
doubt issue in that clatter of tongues, which 
of all things is the busiest and the most ab- 
surd to listen to from without, one's heart 
not in it, one's ear unclaimed by any sound 
of them all. 



76 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

So far, might be an ordinary meeting of 
guests at any wedding on earth : or at least 
it might, changing changeables : but here at 
once we come to something which brings the 
heart into the mouth. HE, there ? And how 
would He comport himself there ? We are 
apt to think of Him as never unbending. 
But it could hardly have been so. Thirty 
years they all had known Him. Perhaps 
none beyond the inmost circle of his family, 
perhaps none but she whose bosom had pil- 
lowed his infant head, knew of the wonders 
of the birth at Bethlehem. What did they all 
think of Him ? At the end of boyhood, we 
left Him increasing in wisdom as in age, and 
in favour with God and man : at his baptism, 
his relative, not knowing his loftier cha- 
racter, says, " I have need to be baptized of 
thee." These are the two testimonies which 
come down to us, only these, from those thirty 
years. From which however we may gather 
much. That first one and its attendant cir- 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 77 

cumstances are full of interest, as we saw last 
month. Let us remember what we said there. 
TVe said that it must be a strange boyish 
character which on the one hand was so 
thoroughly trusted that his parents should go 
a day's journey in ignorance where he was in 
the company : and which on the other hand 
had so thoroughly kept under its leading 
enthusiasm, that they never thought of seeking 
Him where He wondered that they had not at 
once sought Him. And we said on the former 
of these, thoroughly trusted is warmly loved : 
trust comes through love. And thoroughly 
trusted had another side, as we also saw then. 
" Where is He P" said Joseph. " Safe among 
our kinsfolk or acquaintance," replied the 
blessed mother : " they all love Him like their 
own child." 

Now, from what we then said let us go 
on. He increased in wisdom — He increased 
in favour, — as He increased in age. So that 
He must have been known, in that privacy of 



78 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

neighbourhood life, as a very remarkable and 
a very* popular person. That unique charac- 
ter among the sons of men, half masculine 
majesty, half feminine tenderness, must have 
appeared long before it was manifested to 

Israel. Doubtless, many had come to Him 

7 %j 

for comfort. Doubtless even as a child He 
must have had his little tender-hearted fol- 
lowers. He must have wiped away many a 
tear, long before He put on his harness for 
the victory which shall wipe away all tears. 

" I have need to be baptized of thee." 
Think who speaks the words : one who was 
filled with the Holv Ghost from his mother's 
womb : one who was a pattern of holy purity 
and self-denial. The words meant, (t So fault- 
less art thou, so gentle, so wholly unneeding 
anything that my baptism represents or re- 
quires, that Thou oughtest to be the baptizer, 
and I, who day by day need penitence and 
need purifying, ought to be the receiver of the 
ordinance at Thine hand." 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 79 

Such, then was the wedding Guest : the 
beloved of all, the trusted by all, the coun- 
sellor the comforter. Yet, from what I said 
we must needs suppose that there was in the 
blessed Jesus great reserve : probably some- 
thing like habitual silence : certainly consider- 
able jealousy of the prying eye or the inter- 
fering voice, as regarded any unfolclings of 
his own most mysterious course, opening, 
opening, now year by year. 

We read respecting the wedding, " And 
the mother of Jesus was thei'e." It would 
seem as if she were hardly a guest, but one 
who had a right to be present. The same 
also appears from her ordering the servants 
afterwards. 

The mother. No one else ? It is com- 
monly, and I suppose rightly thought that 
Joseph was ere this gathered to his fathers. 
It is a strange thing to think of the holy 
youth having stood by a death-bed, before his 
power over death was manifested. Could we 



80 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

but lift the veil, and see how He mourned for 
his just and noble parent — what wonderful 
words of comfort He addressed to his mother 
and brethren and sisters — how perhaps He 
went up the hill to pray, and continued all 
night communing with that Father who could 
not be taken from Him. 

One of Marge} r 's little secret questions. 
Well, little one, it may be so : I cannot say, 
but I have sometimes thought it. 

Margey asks whether we shall ever be able 
to inquire about those years. Why not ? Why 
should we not sit round Him on the flowery 
banks of the river of the water of life, and 
hear Him tell of the thoughts and incidents 
of that lovely childhood ? Why should not 
He say to us of the Gospel as He once said 
of the Law, "It was said to them of old 
time/' " He grew in wisdom as in age : " "but 
I say unto you that on such a day . . . ." Ah, 
we cannot fill up one such narrative now. 

But to return to the wedding feast. Jesus 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 81 

was bidden, and his disciples. So that by 
this time He had around Him a body of 
recognised followers : those I suppose who 
had been spoken of as called by Him in the 
chapter before. 

And so the meal went on : but what followed 
was somewhat strange. The wine ran short. 
On such occasions generally the supply is 
abundant. What was the cause does not 
appear. It may have been the poverty of the 
family, or an unexpected accession of guests, 
but so it was. And apparently the defect was 
not quite unexpected. There must surely have 
been some previous conversation on the sub- 
ject, or the mother of Jesus could hardly have 
said what she did. We know how she watched 
Him: how she laid up all things concerning 
Him in her heart. It may well have been 
that there had been in the house at Nazareth 
some foreboding of such failure, and fear of the 
giver of the feast being put to shame : and 
that some general remark of his, unnoticed 

G 



82 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

perhaps by others, may have set her motherly 
heart beating high with expectation. For we 
are utterly unable to comprehend the blessed 
and intimate relation of a mother, and such a 
mother, towards such a Child — the eagerness 
for his manifestation, now so long delayed — 
the impatience of his seeming reserve and 
want of ambition, with all these years slipping 
away beneath her eye. So she comes forward 
in the character of his prompter and patroness 
— with somewhat of a woman's and a mother's 
desire to show off the his-h dignity of her Son : 
she said unto Him, " They have no wine." 

It has been asked, What did she expect 
Him to do ? because we have it from St. John 
that this was his first miracle, and therefore 
she could not have looked forward to anything 
so out of the common course from Him. But 
I think those who ask this question know but 
little of the very close relation of which we 
have just been speaking. She had long and 
narrowly watched his thoughts and words. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 83 

The idea, of commanding the powers of nature 
by a power above nature, had been ripening 
in his mind perhaps for months. If He spoke 
of such matters at all, especially if there had 
taken place anything like the conversation 
we have mentioned, the slightest hint dropped 
by Him could not fail to speak meaning to the 
watchful mother's heart. 

So she thought and thought, and bided her 
time. And it was with her, as it often is with 
us : a bold idea, at first entertained with 
reluctance, becomes by degrees familiar to the 
fore-castings of action : we fancy ourselves 
uttering it, we shape the words in which it 
is to take form, we rehearse it again and again 
in our minds : and when the anticijDated 
moment arrives we act, not the modest part 
which was at first suggested, but all that the 
imagination built over and round it — we say 
too much for our own end and our own peace : 
and the end is not making, but marring. 

She said unto Him, " They have no wine.'' 



8 4 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

How reluctant even we are to have a rising 
intention forestalled ! I remember the other 
day, Jessie, when you had ripened in your 
mind the scheme to take rooms in the Bank- 
side cottage for poor Widow Burns, and I some- 
what rashly suggested to you the very same 
idea, how you flushed up, and chided down 
some rising passion within, and one of life's 
great lessons, " Let alone," came like a wave 

over mv heart's heart. 

*/ 

And so doubtless did the blessed mother 
repent of her words the moment after. For 
let it not be disguised that the reply she had 
from Him was in the tone of stern rebuke. It 
is not the mere address, " woman " — that He 
used in the last sad words on the cross — but 
it was the T£ e/xot kcu <tol : What have I to 
do with thee ? words which surely never would 
be used in other than rebuke. She had fore- 
stalled his first rising purpose by an ill-timed 
hint : and she was to be admonished that the 
high mission of the Son was not to be in- 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES, S$ 

augurated at the bidding of the mother. But 
the purpose was not to be abandoned, nor the 
inauguration of the mission retarded. There 
is exquisite womanly tact in her words that 
follow. To the reproof, no answer : of the 
earnest purpose, no abatement. " She saith 
to the servants, Whatsoever He saith unto you, 
do it." Her instinct told her that He would 
do that, for the doing of which she was not to 
be his patroness. 

And now, dear ones, I believe we have 
finished our Homily. It was not my intention 
to dwell on the wonderful miracle itself. Be- 
cause it is so plain ; especially to young and 
simple minds. "Let there be light, and there 
was light : ,J " let the water be drawn out wine, 
and it was so." It is one and the same power : 
that is all that is to be said : and in saying 
it there are volumes of blessing and comfort. 

But notice one thing. The Lord Jesus 
acted here, with one of his beneficent be- 
stowals, as He uniformly acts with the rest. 



86 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

He created in abundance — lavishly — profusely. 
He created that which He has made for good, 
but which man's evil may turn into mischief. 
It is the dispensation of Eden over again : the 
tree in the midst, open and accessible. Thus 
God does, helping man with his grace. But 
how do men act in the same matter? Had 
Eden been man's garden, instead of God's, we 
should have had a cast-iron fence with spikes 
round the tree of knowledge : had some of our 
present philanthropists been guests at that 
wedding we should have had them beseeching 
the Lord of .bounty and grace not to create 
wine that might inebriate, as we have them 
now trying to gain credence for a fiction that 
what He did create was not wine at all. 

Well, darlings, let us be thankful in our 
bodies and our souls that God knows better, 
and that we are in his hands. 

And so to Ken's Evening Hymn, to the old 
Tallis's Canon : the most soothing of hymns 
and of tunes. 



VII. 

CAN have no doubt who placed that little 
modest note on my bureau this morning. 
Guilty, little one ? No sign. Oh, I see, by looks 
exchanged between mamma and Jessie, that I 
was mistaken. Well, any how, the little note 
has gained the day, and shaped the fashion of 
our homily to-night. 

But there is one thing in it with which 
I cannot comply. It requests that I will treat 
to-night the Lord's miracles of raising the 
dead. But if I take them all in one evening, 
I think we shall be not much the better for it. 
You know, there are three. Not that there 
were not many others : but three only are 
related for us in the Gospels. Of those three, 



88 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

the last, the raising of Lazarus, is immeasurably 
the most important : both in itself, and in the 
consequences to which it led. Besides, it 
happened quite at the end of the dear Lord's- 
ministry . here below : and I have several 
themes on which I should like to talk with 
you (yes, Margey, I feel the pressure of the 
little warm hand) before we come to the scenes 
at the end. 

And as to the two others, I cannot consent 
to group them in one Homily. They present 
features so distinct, and so full of interest in 
their distinctness, that each must be considered 
alone. 

We will take them in order as they hap- 
pened. And notice that this is not the order 
in which they are found in our first Grospel, 
that of St. Matthew. I told you the other 
day, that there has been a great confusion of 
arrangement of events in the former part of 
St. Matthew. I shall have to say more on this 
point when we come to the second of our 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 89 

miracles, next time. At present, we will speak 
of the first. 

The Lord had but lately finished that great 
series of discourses to the people, of which the 
Sermon on the Mount represents to us the 
substance. Turn to Luke vii. 1, and you will 
find the point in his ministry at which we are 
standing. There you will see that after finish- 
ing all those sayings, his first work was the 
wonderful healing of the Centurion's servant 
with a word : made more wonderful still, be- 
cause the faith of the Centurion had antici- 
pated this exercise of almightj 7 power. Then, 
in verse 11, we find ourselves with Him on the 
following day. He has advanced onward on 
his circuit from Capernaum, and is approach- 
ing a place {city, in the Gospel ; but it was 
probably not a city in our modern meaning of 
the word) called Nairn 

Now an idea of this approach may best be 
gained by my describing to you that to any 
hill village in the South of Europe : for tra- 



<)0 FIRESIDE HO 31 HIES. 

yellers tell us that this was such a place, set on 
an hill. 

Capernaum was on the shores of the blue 
lake of Galilee. From thence the Lord and 
his disciples had set out, possibly after the 
morning meal. They had toiled through the 
level and over uplands, along stony paths, 
sometimes quite rugged and unmade, some- 
times, in the steeper parts, carefully laid with 
fitted stones, and curbs to carry off the water. 
To us, these stony paths are very wearisome : 
the continually varying surface twists the boot 
or shoe, and the sole becomes polished with 
the dry smooth stone, and slips back on the 
steeper ascents. But the bare foot suffers 
none of these annoyances. When once it has 
acquired a sole of sufficient hardness to resist 
the wear and tear of the journey, it accom- 
modates itself to the hollows of the pavement, 
and it is never liable to slip. So that what 
would be to us a journey of some distraction 
from carefully picking the way, was probably 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 91 

made by them without a thought of its diffi- 
culty, and with minds fully open to the 
wondrous discourse of Him who talked with 
them by the way, and made their hearts to 
burn within them. 

And so they passed on, — now in full blaze of 
the sun on the side of the bare hill, now among 
walled terraces shaded with olives and fig- 
trees, now on the plains, full of verdure and 
streams. On one of those terraces, there may 
have been a mid-day rest and an hour of 
slumber : or perhaps a discourse, or even a 
miracle of healing, which has found no record 
in our Gospels. 

And now the sun was westering ; and the 
rocks over the olive-trees, and the tops of the 
lines of wall supporting the planted terraces, 
were lighted up with tints of orange and rose, 
as they were climbing towards the eastward 
facing gate of Nain. As they look up, a crowd 
surrounds the entrance. 

It is the solemn hour of carrying out the 



92 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

dead : and there can be no doubt what that 
concourse means. On all their minds — yes, 
and on His among them, who was wrought 
upon, as we are, hy common sights and sounds, 
falls a shadow of solemn thought, and a 
softened mood, shedding the dew of pity over 
heart and eve. The presence of sorrow — there 
is not a mightier power known. Of a thousand 
hidden places in the heart the secret doors 
at once fly open, and long-buried memories stir 
within. What a volume is human grief! 
Each of those apostles is in a moment busy 
with his heart's own bitterness, mellowed by 
the loving light of another's woe. Peter, the 
married man — John, loving and beloved — 
Thomas, the attached and desponding — nay, 
even one in whom two voices were as yet striv- 
ing, if the Fiend had not ere this prevailed, 
even he may have felt the tear swelling up, as 
some memory of child, brother, parent thus 
carried forth, came rushing onward uncalled. 
And He who walked in the midst — I believe 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 93 

He did not on each of these occasions, any 
more than ourselves, necessarily know, or 
rather choose to know, recognise, and put 
before Him, all that He was about to do. He 
left Himself ojDen to impressions, and let his 
resolves spring out of circumstances, on the 
surface of his marvellous being ; though in 
the depths beneath there was perfect know- 
ledge of what He would do, and of all things 
that were coming upon Him. 

TTho can tell how short a time it was since 
the head of the household at Nazareth, the 
jus: and Gfod-fearing parent, had been borne 
forth on an evening like this ? YTho shall say 
what blessed thoughts then poured themselves 
over the heart of the son of the widowed 
mother, — thoughts of, and burning longings 
for, the day, when He who then held up her 
stricken form should proclaim Himself the 
Resurrection and the Life ? And all these 
thoughts rose up anew on his soul at the 
sight of this funeral company. 



94 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

And thus the two bands meet, and now the 
cause of the unusual throng appears. It is an 
occasion of no common mourning. The deso- 
late is further desolated; a widowed mother 
has lost her only son. It is for this reason 
that much people of the city is there. They 
are doing what they can ; poor service indeed, 
but still that which gilds the robe of sable 
with a hem of gold. 

And now, dear ones, it is for us to fill up, if 
we would imagine that scene however insuffi- 
ciently, the gaps in the Gospel narrative, 
by picturing to ourselves the action which 
prompted the utterances there recorded. 

First comes the perception of the poor 
widow by the Lord. " When the Lord saw 
her/' Now there is something worthy of 
notice in this name, " the Lord." It is pro- 
bably never used of Jesus in this simple way 
by either St. Matthew or St. Mark. For 
Matt, xxviii. 6 is doubtful ; and Mark xvi. 19 
is part of an addition to the Gospel which 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 95 

probably was not written by the Evangelist 
himself. But St. Luke and St. John repeatedly 
use it, the former thirteen times, the latter ten 
times. It seems to have been a title which 
gradually came into use as the disciples learned 
more entirely to look up to and to pay obedience- 
to Jesus. The practice of so calling Him had 
become usual before He said to them in John 
xiii. 13, " Ye call me ' Lord ' " (this is not in 
the vocative, Jessie, but is really " Te call me 
'the Lord' "). And it forms a kind of title of 
dignity mingled with sympathy, the occur- 
rence of which is sometimes very touching.. 
So it is here. In this title " the Lord," here, 
there is a mixture of human sympathy and 
divine power. Who does not feel this when 
St. Luke says, " The Lord turned, and looked 
upon Peter " ? If " Jesus " only, the personal 
name, had been here used, how different would 
have been the effect — how shorn of its majesty 
— for "Jesus" in this scene is mainly the 
sufferer : if Christ, — how different — how shorn 



96 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

of its sympathy ! But " the Lord " unites 
both these. 

Well, "the Lord" saw her. Amidst the 
crowd, his eye, as the eyes of his disciples 
and of the much people of his own time, 
singled out this one central object, and the 
sympathy which had before been general, 
became special. The head of the one band 
who came for teaching and witnessing and 
beholding, approaches the head of the other 
band, who came for mourning and comforting. 

But what jarring words are these, "Weep 
not ! " How often are they spoken helplessly 
and in vain ! That can hardly have been so in 
this case. We must suppose that there was 
something in the Lord's look and gesture as 
He spoke them, which carried strange feelings 
into the poor mourner's heart. There must 
have been a majestic drawing up of the form — 
a power kindled in the eye, of Him who spoke 
these commonplace words of conventional com- 
fort. They were less a consolation, than a 



. FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 97 

command ; which to obey, was consolation. 
And that witness of the fact who was induced 
to call Jesus " the Lord " in describing it, has 
by this very name set before us this influx of 
his divine power on the gushing of his human 
sympathy. " The Lord " is a living token 
that he who first wrote the narrative, had seen 
the transaction with his own eyes and was one 
with the spirit of it. 

And now, darlings, let us follow on. The 
sad mother, we may well believe, stands still 
in her astonishment, waiting*- for what is 
to come of this word of power, which has 
staunched her grief within her. jSTor does she 
wait long. All eyes are upon Him who has 
thus interfered with the sacred flow of sym- 
pathy and woe. Some may have regarded 
Him merely as a rude disturber : but I doubt 
whether these were many. Some may have 
had faith enough to anticipate what He was 
going to do : but I am sure these were few. 
That Centurion who is even now thanking 

H 



93 FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 

God in his joyful household — that blessed 
Mother who went beyond herself in prompting 
his first miracle — I know not whether there 
were any others in whom there was such 
faith : and neither of these was present. The 
greater part of those who were, were probably 
in a doubtful state of mind, not knowing how 
far his power might extend, — expecting some- 
thing, they could hardly shape what. 

But doubt is soon clearing up and giving 
place to eager expectation. His next approach, 
his next address, is not to the mourner. 
The reason why she is not to weep is not to be 
given in words. " He came and touched the 
bier/' 

The body was being borne out, as we may 
even now see the dead carried forth in the 
South of Europe, open, in a bier, the face and 
the hands uncovered. As yet the procession 
was moving on. But there was that in the 
mien of Him who had his hand on the bier 
which at once stopped the bearers. It spoke, 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 99 

of high resolve, and power to accomplish it. 
It was a look, in the presence of which no 
ordinary matter could go on. How many 
hearts are beating high in those two multi- 
tudes, now mingled into one ! Upon how 
many minds is breaking the truth that One 
is present who can call the dead to life ! Of 
all perhaps she who is most concerned realises 
this the least. Immense issues like this 
rather numb the spirit, than excite it. She 
stands, awed, calmed, but scarce consciously 
expectant. r 

But what words are these ? " Young man, 
to thee I say it," .... Person addresses 
person. It is no new creation, observe. The 
Almighty One is not about to call a new life 
into being. The poor body, already touched 
with decay, is still, in the eye of God, the 
tabernacle of the soul :— " Young man," — or is 
this an anticipation on the part of the Lord of 
that re-union of body and soul which is so 
soon to take place ? " To thee I say it " — 



ioo FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

to thee, wherever tarrying in this disembodied 
state, but by the word called back to the body, 
" arise ! " Enter again, and take possession : 
be fitted, each minutest root and fibre of 
organized nervous life, into that junction of 
which decay has already blunted the fine 
points of union — let the muscle be knit into 
its elastic spring, and the brain, collapsed and 
dethroned, re- assume its central sway. All 
this, and a thousand other hidden wonders, 
must take place, before the dead man can sit 
up as the Lord commands. 

Yet all is done, in a moment. He who 
made can remake. Yea, more — life returns, 
not by instalments, but at once and complete. 
In the beautiful story of Alcestis, which I 
read to you, Jessie, the other day,* you remem- 
ber, that when Admetus has recovered his lost 
one from the grave, she remains silent until 
the third day : — speech is the last sign of 

* From il Chapters on the Poets of Ancient Greece ; " a 
book he published, 1841.— Ed. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 101 

renewed life which, returns. But here it is 
not so. " The dead man sat up and began to 
speak." We are not told of what. Did he 
question his recovered being ? Did he wonder 
at the throng, the amazement in all around 
him, the strange evening light ? Did he 
stretch his arms to his mother with a cry of 
raptured joy ? "We cannot tell. " And He 
delivered him to his mother." " See, thy son 
liveth." Oh what joy ineffable ! What bright 
spots must there have been in the course of the 
Man of Sorrows, when He was able to cause ; 
and to witness, so much joy ! 

" There came a fear on all." What had 
they seen ? in whose presence had they been ? 
A great Prophet had indeed risen up among 
them — greater than Elijah and Elisha, who 
stretched themselves on the dead children and 
prayed : greater than any of whom Scripture 
had hitherto told. And this they further 
expressed when they said that God had visited 
his people : for by those words did Israel 



102 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

commonly speak of the coming of the expected 
Messiah. 

One word more. It was this miracle among 
others to which our Lord appealed, as we learn 
from what follows in St. Luke, for proof that 
He was He that should come, and men were 
not to look for another. 

Oh wonderful power and wonderful love ! 
just one little sample of what the dear glorified 
Lord can do, and will do ! Love Him, my 
darlings, keep ever close to Him in thought 
and affection. And then no death shall ever 
part us. He will come in the world's evening, 
and stand on our earth, and lay his hand on 
the grave, and say, " I say unto thee, Arise ! " 
And then we shall sit up and begin to speak 
his praise : and He will deliver friend to friend, 
and child to parent, and dear lost ones to their 
widowed mates — and all earth will shout, and 
all heaven will echo, that God hath visited 
his people ! 



VIII. 

TT7E are to speak this evening of the raising 
of Jaeirus's daughter. Of the three 
miracles of raising the dead, that at the gate 
of ]Sain is the most wonderful — the bringing 
Lazarus out of his tomb the most awful : but 
this the most deeply interesting. *- 

The Lord had just come from his visit to 
the Land of the Gergesenes, where he had 
cast out the devil from the man, or men, who 
dwelt in the tombs. This is plain from the 
very careful and precise notice in St. Mark 
and St. Luke. In St. Matthew, all this part 
of the history is in confusion. He makes the 
message of Jaeirus to Christ take place while 
He was speaking to the people, after the ques- 
tion about fasting asked by John's disciples, 






104 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

which in reality happened a considerable time 
before, as you will see by comparing the care- 
fully arranged narratives of St. Mark and St. 
Luke. 

When Jesus returned the multitude gladly 
received Him. They were waiting for Him. 
The last they had heard of his teaching was 
that magnificent series of parables concerning 
the kingdom of God which we have most fully 
detailed in Matt. xiii. For, however little we 
might suspect it from St. Matthew's account, 
it was on the evening of that very day, as 
specified by St. Mark, that He crossed the lake 
to the country of the Grergesenes. 

The people were anxious to hear from Him 
more of the same kind. For there is this in 
the parable, which was now his way of teach- 
ing, — that it speaks to every hearer as he or 
she can receive it. The little child enjoys the 
story, and learns something. The plain man 
enters into the worldly wisdom of it, and learns 
more : and \h^ wise and more thoughtful the 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 105 

listener, the more would the wisdom of the 
things said reveal themselves. No wonder 
then, that the people flocked to Him, and 
pressed upon Him, to hear the word of Grod. 
So they anxiously expected Him, all on the 
shore waiting his arrival. 

But there was one who had been waiting 
with more anxiety than the rest. Jaeirus, the 
ruler of the synagogue at Capernaum, had an 
only daughter, twelve years of age, lying at 
the point of death. All human means had 
failed, and there was but one wio could save 
him his child : and He was absent. But on 
the Lord's arrival he at once hastens to Him. 

And here notice again that St. Matthew 
represents the ruler as coming in, and wor- 
shipping our Lord, and saying that his daugh- 
ter was dead : whereas we know from the 
other accounts that she was not dead, but 
dying. And this of course makes an immense 
difference in the nature of the man's faith : 
for in St. Matthew's account he says, in spite 



106 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

of her being dead, "But come and lay thy 
hand on her and she shall live : " whereas, in 
the longer and more exact accounts, it was 
our Lord Himself who suggested to the poor 
father that even her death was no reason why 
he should be afraid, but only believe and she 
should be made whole. 

Now some might ask, and I know mamma 
herself sometimes inquires, why I bring for- 
ward these differences between the Evangelists 
— why I do not rather conceal them, or, if I 
mention them at all, adopt some ingenious 
way of making out that they mean the same, 
though their words are different ? 

Simply, my darlings, because I believe that 
I should be dealing unfaithfully by God and 
by Truth in doing so. If He has been pleased 
that the Evangelists should give us differing 
accounts of the same fact, it was for wise 
reasons that He did so, and that we might 
make wise use of the difference, not that we 
might cover it up and hide it out of sight. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 107 

To my mind these differences (discrepancies, 
as they are called) are the strongest possible 
marks of the truth of the facts themselves. 
If the Evangelists were deceivers, intent upon 
making men believe that things happened 
which never did happen, they would have 
taken good care that no such differences should 
be found in their stories. But being, as they 
were, independent and honest narrators of 
facts which really happened, they were liable 
to what occurs to all human witnesses— they 
reported variously, and sometimes inconsis- 
tently one with another. And there used to 
be no difficulty in getting people to acknow- 
ledge this. I remember in the Greek Testa- 
ment which we used to read when I was young, 
with notes written by a very good sound man, 
Dr. Burton, Professor of Divinity at Oxford, 
we were told regarding some difficulty in the 
Acts of the Apostles, that " probably St. Luke 
was not well informed respecting this part of 
St. Paul's life : " and no one thought any harm 



108 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

of this then, because it was — not perhaps in 
this particular case, but in many others — 
what every intelligent man then thought. But 
men are now become such slaves to the letter, 
and so careless about the spirit, of Holy Scrip- 
ture, that they will maintain every account to 
be separately true in every detail, or else they 
say we cannot believe our Bibles. 

Well, darlings, we all do believe our Bibles : 
and yet we do not believe that Jaeirus's daugh- 
ter was dead, as St. Matthew says she was, 
when her father came to Jesus. 

Now Jaeirus was the ruler of the synagogue, 
and as such was perhaps present when the 
Lord healed the withered hand some time 
before. His faith had been deeply rooted 
before he could say of his dying child, " Come, 
lay thy hand on her, and she shall live," You 
know in some measure, dear children, and 
mamma and I know in full bitterness, the 
anguish of despair which takes possession of 
us when one very dearly loved lies in extreme 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 109 

danger. And we have felt it all the more, 
because it has so happened that not one of our 
beloved ones has ever been seriously ill and 
recovered. In their cases illness has meant 
death : and so, as one after another has been 
struck down, we have sunk at once, I fear, 
into hopelessness from the first— hopelessness 
which it would take a very strong faith to 
penetrate and illumine. 

The blessed Lord was never slow at the call 
of faith. He, followed by his disciples, went 
at once with the anxious father*- But on the 
way an incident occurred which occasioned 
delay. And the delay, humanly speaking, was 
fatal. During it the poor child had died. 
" It is of no further use to trouble the Master 
to come ; " thus ran the message from the 
ruler's house. What effect the words had on 
him we are not told. Jesus overheard them 
being spoken, and made answer to them by 
an address to the father, " Be not afraid: 
believe only, and she shall be made whole." 



no FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 

The inhabitants of Capernaum could not 
have been ignorant of the raising of the 
widow's son at ISTain : so that we can hardly 
attribute the tenor of the message to Jaeirus to 
ignorance of the poiver of Jesus. We may 
fairly set it down either to the slowness of 
men to take in and appropriate (so to speak) 
such astounding facts, or to some idea that 
that former miracle had been wrought in 
favour of a peculiarly heartrending case of 
bereavement, and that it formed no justifica- 
tion for urging on " the Master " a request to 
do the like in this more ordinary case. 

But the company have reached the house : 
and there they find the noisy accompaniments 
of Eastern woe, " the minstrels and the multi- 
tude making a noise/' as St. Matthew has it : 
" a tumult, and the people weeping and wail- 
ing greatly," as St. Mark. It does not quite 
appear whether all the disciples, or only Peter, 
James, and John, came with Him : probably 
only the latter, as apparently asserted by St. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES, in 

Mark, But however few the attendants might 
be, the intrusion of strangers at such a time, 
with a purpose manifestly alien from the 
mournful employ of those assembled, set the 
two companies in strong contrast. Their be- 
haviour provokes a rebuke from the Lord : 
i( Why make ye this ado, and weep ? the child 
is not dead, but sleepeth." All the Evangelists 
describe in the same words the reply of the 
multitude : " they laughed Him to scorn ;" and 
St. Luke, the physician, adds, " knowing that 
she was dead." r 

But He put them all aside. There was 
something of the majesty with which He had 
gone up to the bier at Xain, when they who 
bare it stood still : so that all yielded and made 
way. 

But what exactly do we suppose the Lord 
meant by "She is not dead, but sleepeth?" 
Because, you see, she was really dead : and 
the knowledge that she was, provoked that 
scorn of which we read in the minds of the 



U2 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

people. The meaning seems clear, if we think 
of what He had it in his mind to do. " This 
death, which you weep and bewail, is in reality- 
no more than a mid-day slumber, so soon shall 
it come to an end." 

And now they enter the chamber of death, 
those six — the Lord, the three disciples, the 
father and mother of the maiden. How like 
are all chambers of death — and yet how unlike 
others was this one ! You remember when 
we four last entered such a chamber * — and on 
that little press-bed in the corner by the 
window lay all we cared for in that room. 
The rosy beams of the setting sun, I remem- 
ber, streamed in at the window and filled it 
with glory ; the sea outside lay bright under 
the great red orb : what recked we of these, or 
of aught else there but of that one pale form ? 
We scarce dared breathe — even grief was 
lulled, and all was solemnised, without a feel- 

* This description, like the one in the Second Homily, 
refers to the scene of our dear boy's death in 1850. — Ed. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 113 

ing beyond. And, as I said, how different 
was this chamber of which we now speak ! 
There lay the pale form from which life had 
but now fled, with, we may well imagine, that 
first sweet look of death, which seems more 
like the living person than was even life 
itself :--— 

" Before decay's effacing fingers 
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers." * 

But here is something more than that pale 
form: here is One greater than death : here 
is a restless hope, a leaping expectation, that 
makes every heart throb, and fixes every eye, 
not on the lifeless form, but on Him, the Lord 
of Life. See — He approaches the bed — He 
takes the waxen hand as it lies on the side — 
He speaks, and they are the gentlest word 
of affection. " Come, my child," He says — 
no more ; and the maiden arises as if out of a 
sweet slumber at awaking time. She rises, 

* From Byron's a Giaour," line 72. — Ed. 
I 



ii4 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

not to languor and disease, but to health and 
appetite. She begins to walk; and He com- 
manded that food should be given her. 

And all this is to be kept secret. " He 
ordered them many times that none should 
know the matter/' says St. Mark. Very 
strange sound these injunctions of the Lord. 
For how was the truth to be kept from the 
multitude without ? What account could the 
parents give, but one ? The death might no 
doubt have seemed to them to have been but a 
suspension of life : but here was more. Here 
was the girl who but now was in the last stage 
of dangerous disease, in perfect health. She 
who had not perhaps left her bed for many 
days, was now walking among them, and 
strong. It may seem strange to say it, but 
one cannot help feeling that these injunctions 
of the Lord must always have been from the 
very nature of the case, broken — as we know 
they were broken in some related instances : 
"the more He commanded them, the more a 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 115 

great deal they published it." And the real 
practical result which they had may have been 
this — that they lay as an obligation on the 
consciences of the healed person and the 
friends, not to make vain boast of the miracle, 
or to use it as food for idle curiosity. 



IX. 



Films is an evening I have long looked for- 
ward to. For of all the narratives of our 
Lord's acts none is so full of his majesty and 
his sympathy as this of the raising of Lazarus. 
We have been in some measure prepared for 
it by those previous miracles of raising from 
the dead ; but when we approach this, we at 
once feel that we are in a different atmosphere, 
so to speak, and with wholly different circum- 
stances to consider. 

Let me try to explain this. Those other 
two were wrought, so to speak, in the course 
of events. The Lord was sent for to the house 
of Jaeirus : He met the funeral procession at 
the gates of Nam. Doubtless both wonderful 
acts did much to disperse his fame abroad. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 117 

Of the latter of the two we are expressly told 
this. 

But with this raising of Lazarus all was 
different. It was not a mere incident in one 
of our Lord's progresses. It was a matter 
carefully prepared and brought about by his 
own design. It was, again, not merely an 
act which spread abroad his fame. It had 
indeed an effect, but of a far other kind. It 
was, humanly speaking, the great moving 
cause of the Lord's death. And He deliber- 
ately did it, knowing it would have this effect. 

Now all this removes it aWay from his 
other miracles in dignity and significance. 
And in another particular also is it removed 
from them. You will remember, that not a 
word is said of it in the three first Gospels. 
We have it from St. John alone. And this is 
a circumstance full of strangeness : so much 
so, that many have been thereby induced to 
seek for some reason why it should thus have 
been. But no reason has ever been found, 



n8 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

worth my naming to you : none which would 
for a moment satisfy young minds accustomed 
to require something like probability when 
reasons are given. Whatever may be the 
cause, so it is : that neither in St. Matthew, 
nor in St. Mark, nor in St. Luke, is any hint 
whatever given of this greatest miraculous act 
of Jesus, of this which, above every other act, 
brought about his death. St. Luke admits us 
to a glimpse of the family, and gives us an 
interesting trait of \ki^ characters of the two 
sisters ; but he never mentions their residence 
at Bethany, nor indeed that Jesus went out to 
Bethany during the former nights of the week 
of his passion : which is related by the two 
other Evangelists. Nor does St. Luke mention 
the anointing which took place in the house 
of the sisters : an incident related by the other 
three. These facts may serve to show us how 
vain is the attempt to give any account of the 
framing of the Evangelic narratives. Thus 
much indeed we may say, that it was natural 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. HQ 

for that Evangelist who gives the inner history 
of our Lord's life and acts, to relate in all 
its detail a matter so full of the manifesta- 
tion both of his humanity and his divinity ; 
natural for one who traces onwards his glori- 
fication through the conflict which ended in 
his death, to dwell on the great act which 
brought that conflict to its issue. 

What, little one, has the head sunk on my 
knee already ? The beginning is not promis- 
ing, is it ? Too dull, and too many long 
words. Well, we'll try now to come to some- 
thing simpler. 

The Lord had withdrawn himself from the 
enmity of the Jews, which had risen to a head 
after the healing of the man blind from his 
birth, and the discourse about good and bad 
shepherds. He was on the other side of 
Jordan, probably at the other Bethany or 
Bethabara, at the distance of about a day's 
journey. 

And now let. us look in on the family at 



120 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

this Bethany. Here are a brother and two 
sisters, all beloved by Jesus. They are not 
called his disciples ; but they evidently be- 
lieved on Him. They seem to have been 
people of some wealth. We find one of the 
sisters anointing the Lord with very costly 
ointment : we find chief men among the Jews 
coming to visit and comfort them. All this 
is strangely interesting to us. "Were there 
more such persons ? or were these the only 
persons thus beloved by our Lord ? 

There was another member of the household 
of whom we hear nothing in this history : and 
that member was its head. For it was " in the 
house of Simon the leper," as we know from 
St. Matthew and St. Mark, that the Lord was 
anointed by Mary. Was Simon identical with 
Lazarus ? Or was he no longer living, and 
was the house still called by his name ? Or 
was his house, when the anointing took place, 
not that of Martha and Mary and Lazarus ? 
and were they found in it merely as neigh- 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 121 

bours or friends ? Or, again, was lie perhaps 
the husband of Martha ? This may well have 
been : for Lazarus evidently was not the master 
of the house, being only one of those who sat 
at meat with our Lord on the occasion of the 
anointing. 

So there is, you see, some uncertainty about 
the members of the little household : which 
however does not affect our conception of the 
three concerned in this history — Martha, 
Mary, and Lazarus. jSTow we all know the 
course of the sacred story. I am not going 
to tell it over again, but merely to try to give 
life and freshness to our conceptions of it, by 
dwelling on some portions. 

Remember what we read last night in pre- 
paration for our present employment — that 
beautiful and living description in Stanley,* 
of the situation of Bethany, and the roads 
leading from it in each direction. And, re- 
membering this, let us stand with the two 
* " Sinai and Palestine," pp. 189—195. 



122 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

sisters at the sick-bed of liim whora Jesus 
loved. In vain they look, — in vain they have 
for one whole day looked, — along the path 
which ascends from the deep valley of the 
Jordan for the well-known form of Him whose 
coming is to end their harassing anxiety. 
Somewhere under that distant line of moun- 
tains He is tarrying. How should He have 
received their earnest call, and not have 
obeyed it ? Of his power they have no doubt. 
If He were here, their brother would be safe. 
This heaving frame would be quiet, these 
damp dews of death would disperse, at the 
entrance and the first word of Him whom 
they had long believed to be the Christ, the 
Son of God, who should come into the world. 
But He comes not. If there is no distrust 
of his power, there gradually arises something 
like distrust of his loving care. The words 
of the two sisters to Him when He does come 
seem to show this— " Lord, if thou hadst been 
here, my brother had not died." But the 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 123 

dreary hours of hope deferred pass away, 
the dark moment of death itself is past, — 
the burial in the cave outside the village — the 
first day of bereavement, — the second, — the 
third, — with their companies of sympathizing 
and well-meaning comforters from Jerusalem 
coming and going : and yet — no help ! 

At a certain time on the fourth day, Martha, 
busy about her household matters, or having 
gone forth into the village, hears that the 
figure of Jesus has been descried coming up 
the path. In a moment, without waiting to 
tell her sister, who was in the house with 
the band of friends from Jerusalem, she runs 
to meet Him. And now, I think, there is 
something to be said about Martha's words 
to Him. First comes the sad and somewhat 
complaining sentence : His presence might 
have prevented that which had happened. Of 
this it may of course be said that it need not 
convey a complaint — because, if the death took 
place before our Lord could possibly have 



I2 4 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

reached Bethany (which, it is not unlikely it 
did) the words may merely be an expression 
of earnest faith in his power, whenever and 
wherever present. 

But what does Martha add ? " Even now, 
whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will 
give thee/' What does this mean ? I won't 
confuse my little listener with other meanings 
than that which I must think is the only 
right one. Martha, in her forwardness and 
rashness, for an instant anticipates the great 
work which the Lord was about to do — and 
she means, " God will enable thee to raise 
him up again, even now that he has been 
dead four days." It was truly a rash thought 
— and one not soberly formed by herself. 
Afterwards she loses sight of it, as hasty 
spirits are apt to lose sight of their own shifty 
moods : she is blind to it, nay, she even 
recoils from it, when it was on the point to 
be realised. 

Have we no similar instance in the Gospel 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 125 

record ? Was not the rashness of the Lord's 
own mother at Cana in Galilee something 
very like this ? And do not our own lives 
furnish, in their lower degree, something of the 
same kind ? Whilst some hardly certain step 
is hanging in doubt in our own minds, and 
we are balancing interests and probabilities, 
is it not frequently found that a woman or 
a child has anticipated, by a swift instinctive 
leap, the final result of our deliberations, and 
announced our intention long before we had 
formed it ? ]S"ot that the Lord was thus 
wavering — He knew what He 'would do : but 
the analogy is good on one side at least, that 
of her whose rapid anticipation in its very 
weakness grasped the great conclusion, pre- 
determined by the Life-giver in his strength. 

Understand her words thus, and all follows 
naturally. " Thy brother shall rise again. " 
" Yes," replies Martha, somewhat baffled and 
thrown out of her train of thought by the 
words, "I know that he will, when all shall 



126 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

rise at the last day." And how is this 
natural? Why does the Lord thus put her 
off? Simply for this reason. Her previous 
words placed the matter on a wrong ground. 
They pointed at the bringing to life again 
of her brother. True : but merely as a favour 
to be asked of God, and to be obtained, as 
a very holy man might obtain it, by prayer. 
Such was not the thought with which the 
Lord's great act was to be approached. His 
own power, granted Him by the Father, but 
not as a mere answer to a human prayer 
may be granted, to have life in Himself, — 
to be the Resurrection and the Life, the an- 
nihilator of Death in the body and in the 
soul, — this must be put forward and acknow- 
ledged, before the glory of God in this act 
could be seen aright. Does she believe this ? 

Well, she does not quite apprehend the 
glorious words : she is asked one thing, she 
answers another thing : she is ready to believe 
all — for she has long believed that He who 






FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 127 

speaks to her is the Christ, the Son of God 
who was to come into the world. Whatever 
this implies, she believes ; but neither in her 
answer, nor in her thoughts, does she enter 
into the full meaning of the Lord's question. 
And now she goes at once and calls her 
sister. Perhaps the Lord had at this moment 
asked for Mary : perhaps He had done so- 
before, and Martha naturally, when He began 
to treat of high and holy truths, thought of 
fetching her of whom we know from St. Luke 
that she was used to sit at his feet and hear 
his word. 

She called her secretly. That is, I suppose- 
she sent in to the place where she sat with 
the Jews, to tell her that she was wanted : and 
then, on her coming out, imparted to her the 
intelligence. That this was probably so, i& 
shown by the Jews only remarking that she- 
rose up quickly and went out. 

They found Jesus in the same place where 
Martha had met Him: a plain proof that it 



128 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

was really He who had sent for Mary, as 
He remained there awaiting her coming. "We 
can all understand why He would not enter 
the village, — without supposing, as some have 
done, that it was because He desired privacy. 
This was in fact the only one of his miracles 
for which He desired publicity, as we shall see 
further on. 

The place was in the way from the village 
to the grave, as appears by the Jews, who 
thought Mary was going there to weep, fol- 
lowing in her track. As she went, she wept, 
and those who followed her wept also. And 
here we have the very deepest and holiest 
proof of the Blessed One's full share of our 
common nature. The sight of sorrow in 
others, if that sorrow also be his own, is more 
than even the strong man can bear. And 
the Lord's act of self-command is described 
by a remarkable term : the same word as is 
employed when He rebuked those whom He 
healed, and charged them not to make Him 



i 



I 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 129 

known. If such an English combination were 
allowable, " vehemently checking himself " 
would seem to be nearest to the sense : at 
all events, nearer than " groaning," as our 
version has it, which is not at all what is 
intended. This check seemed to be necessary 
for the utterance of the question which fol- 
lowed : " Where have ye laid him ? " But 
no sooner is it uttered, than nature had her 
way. By those tears, human sorrows are 
hallowed, human bereavements are glorified. 
The gods of the heathen might not look upon 
death : the world's Saviour wept at the grave 
of his friend. Which of these would draw all 
men unto him ? 

On the great scene of the miracle itself, I 
say but these few words. Martha seems 
utterly to have shrunk back from her mo- 
mentary hope, when she deprecates the 
opening of the tomb. Her words may even 
have been intended as an express repudiation 
of her former rashly uttered assumption. 

K 



130 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

Secondly, the Lord's words must be re- 
garded as having a close connection with that 
former utterance of Martha's. He knew that 
the Father always loved Him ; and in this 
case too his prayer had been answered. So 
that his thanksgiving was not as for anything 
unexpected or unusual ; but had for its object 
to persuade those who stood around of his 
divine mission. 

Thirdly, that the Lord's call to Lazarus 
was not merely " a loud voice," but a loud 
shout — symbolizing and anticipating that 
voice of the Son of God which shall echo 
one day through the sepulchres of the 
world. 

As to the manner of the dead coming forth, 
some think that the grave-clothes were only 
swathed round each limb, leaving movement 
free. But it seems far more probable from 
our Lord's command, " Loose him and let 
him go," that there was, as an old writer 
observed, a miracle within a miracle — that 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 131 

the form, swathed and confined, glided forth 
supernatural^ from the tomb. And so the 
most ancient pictures represent it. 

I have observed before that the Lord, who 
in the earlier days of his ministry shrunk 
from publicity for his wonderful acts, now 
courts it. He even utters his prayer " because 
of them that stood by." And all the conse- 
quences of the work, wrought under the eye 
of unsympathizing enemies, wrought at the 
approach of the great assemblage of the 
Jewish race at Jerusalem, were before Him : 
the raising thereby of the enmity of the Chief 
Priests and the Pharisees to its highest : the 
fatal decree of the council which followed on 
the miracle : the bringing about of the tri- 
umphal entry, which St. John attributes en- 
tirely to this miracle : the week of conflict, 
ending in the cross and the grave. 

And we seem to see that all this had been 
long present to the Lord's thoughts. For in 
the parable of the rich man and the beggar, we 



132 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

have remarkable anticipations of it. We are 
told there of hardened ones who had in their 
hand Moses and the prophets, but believed 
them not : who would not be persuaded, 
though one went unto them from the dead. 
And, strange to say, in this one alone of the 
Lord's parables, is a name given to the dead 
subject of the history, and that name is 
Lazarus. 

And now, darlings, this has been, after all, 
a disappointing evening. Of all the Lord's 
miracles, this one, I suppose as so far trans- 
cending in its sympathy and its majesty all 
our thoughts and powers, most completely 
baffles the preacher and writer. I never 
heard a sermon, I never read a comment, on 
the raising of Lazarus, that did not send me 
away empty, as compared with the fulness 
and refreshment after the Evangelist's own 
grand and simple narrative. And so let our 
night's lesson be, how empty are our thoughts, 
our words, our feelings, in proportion as his 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 133 

Presence is manifested, who alone has all ful- 
ness in Himself. 

Jessie will perhaps repeat the touching lines 
of our Laureate,* which occur to us as we leave 
the wonderful story. 

When Lazarus left his enamel-cave, 

And home to Mary's house return' d, 
Was this demanded — if he yearn' d 

To hear her weeping by his grave ? 

" "Where wert thou, brother, those four days ? " 

There lives no record of reply, 

Which telling what it is to die 
Had surely added praise to praise. 

r 

From every house the neighbours met, 

The streets were filled with joyful sound, 
A solemn gladness even crown' d 

The purple brows of Olivet. 

Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 

The rest remaineth unreveal'd; 

He told it not ; or something seal'd 
The lips of that Evangelist.* 



* Tennyson's "In Memoriam," No. 31. — Ed. 



TI7HAT shall ft be to-night ? Well, M argey, 
there are many things tempting us — 
which shall we choose? Our last talk was 
about that wonderful raising of Lazarus. But 
we advanced thus far in our Lord's life only in 
order to put together those three raisings of the 
dead which are recorded for us in the Gospels. 
We have omitted much that might serve to 
bring his blessed words and works before us 
on these our Sunday evenings. Shall it be 
miracles, or parables, or incidents ? We have a 
great work before we finish if we are to talk 
of the Lord's sufferings and death and resur- 
rection ; but we must necessarily reserve these 
till last. Let us pause and think. 

Well, it seems we ought to have thought 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 135 

before. So suppose we give ourselves a week, 
and by next Sunday get our plan arranged, 
and meantime I will take a subject closely 
connected with our great theme, the Lord's 
life and words, though not in its direct course ; 
I mean the course of him who was the Lord's 
forerunner, John the Baptist. 

We have already said something about the 
beginning of that course when we spoke of the 
childhood of Jesus. The two holy children were 
relations : what relations, does not appear ; for 
the word rendered " cousin " in Luke i. 36, is 
merely " kinswoman " in the original. They 
might doubtless thus have been frequently 
thrown together. This has perhaps been as- 
sumed in our thoughts more as a matter of 
course than it should have been. In childhood, 
and as long as Elizabeth his mother lived, it 
may have been so ; but she was old at John's 
birth, and so was his father, Zechariah, and the 
words, " the child . . . was in the deserts till the 
day of his showing unto Israel," would seem 



136 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

best interpreted by supposing that when lie be- 
came an orphan he took to a wild solitary life. 
At all events, at the time of the baptism there 
does not seem to have been any very inti- 
mate acquaintance between him and our Lord, 
as we shall have occasion to remark by-and-by. 
Still, there appears no reason why there should 
not have been frequent intercourse in child- 
hood. Let us think on this first. 

Of course the representations of Christian 
art are symbolic, rather than aiming at matter 
of fact. As we before remarked, the Holy 
Child is ever the unclothed and sinless One, 
whereas John is partially clothed to represent 
the fact that he had inherited sin, and there- 
fore shame. Probably in matter of fact, both 
children were naked alike without clothing ; 
for such is the custom of those Eastern 
countries, and their customs^ do not vary. 
Nor, of course, have we any right to assume 
that there was any such constant pointing out 
of the Child Jesus as our painters are fond 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 137 

of representing ; nay, we may be certain there 
was not : otherwise John could not in any 
sense have said, " I knew Him not " at the 
baptism. This again, in our paintings, is 
purely symbolic. 

I make these remarks to prevent our con- 
founding truth in art with truth in fact. That 
may be intensely true in art which never 
happened, and could never have happened, in 
fact. 

"Well, the aged father and mother are 
gathered to their rest, and the strange boy 
is left alone. He had " waxed strong in 
spirit ; " was bold, and solitary, and original ; 
unlike other children. We may conjecture by 
the after-events of his course, what was the 
character of this originality and strength of 
spirit. The conventional sins of his time, the 
pomps and vanities of society, the corrupt 
degeneracy of the people of God — these were 
to him matters of aversion and loathing. In- 
stead of soft clothing worn in kings' houses, 



138 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

he is content with the scanty girdle of skin, 
and the cloak of camel's hair for cold ; instead 
of delicate fare, he feeds on the edible locust, 
and flavours it with the honey from the rock. 
His dwelling is in the den, or cave, or tomb ; 
on the mountain side he roams and meditates. 
Rumours are abroad that he has been seen by 
one and another ; we may imagine him, before 
" the day of his showing unto Israel," going 
far to warn the sinner hastening to his ruin, 
testifying to right, telling the truth, and 
boldly rebuking vice ; we can fancy his fame 
spread far and wide as a strange and holy 
youth and man (for near upon thirty years 
thus passed), before the Spirit of the Lord 
came upon him. Thirty years — or say, 
twenty. Do we realise this ? Imagine that 
a lad in strange dress and uttering strange 
words, had taken up his abode in our forest 
in 1849, and was living there as a man still. 
We can hardly imagine the state of society in 
which such a thing could be. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 139 

Well, the years sped on — and at last the 
young man's thoughts, so true, so noble, so 
wild and solitary, were lit up by fire from 
above. The word of the Lord — the " daughter 
of the Yoice," as the Jews called it, came to 
him in the wilderness. And then he saw that 
he was set not merely to rebuke the age and 
to warn sinners, but to prepare the way of the 
Lord ; that the old prophecies which he had 
learned at his holy mother's knees were to be 
fulfilled in himself and in One whose herald he 
was to be. 

And then the wild figure came forth from 
its hiding-places, and began to cry, " Repent, 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Up 
and down, in the tracks of the passoyer pil- 
grims, along the march of soldiers, beside the 
caravans of merchants, the weird Elijah-like 
form appeared — the loud piercing cry sounded. 
We can see him, as old painters have given 
him, rough and desert- grown, but beautiful in 
the strength of his youth, bare to the loins, 



140 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

and with, his sinewy arm pointing to heaven. 
And some doubtless scoffed, and others went 
their way quick for fear they should look and 
have to listen ; but more stood and heeded 
him. And then, what a scene was there ! 
For not one did he spare. No compliments — 
no soft words. The merchant, the soldier, the 
publican, all heard the bold' words that went 
right home and rankled in the heart. And 
when he saw some of rank and learning 
coming, it was not, " Make way for those 
gentlemen;" but it was, "0 brood of vipers, 
who hath taught you to flee from the wrath 
which is at hand ? " 

But what do we see ? The holy man enters 
the river Jordan, which flowed by the scene of 
his crying in the wilderness ; and hundreds 
enter with him. One after another they cast 
off their garments, they bow the head, and 
pass under the water at his bidding — the 
water which represents to them their pro- 
fession, repentance and the washing away of 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 141 

sin. But as lie baptizes, lie protests — " This 
is not all — this is not the end — this baptism is 
only a sign of repentance — there is another 
and a greater — a pouring out of fire and the 
Spirit of God — and One is coming to perform 
it, One who is more above me, than the master 
is above the meanest of his slaves/' 

Strange scene — to which no revival on this 
or the other side of the Atlantic has ever seen 
the like — Jordan's banks and Jordan itself 
full of eager multitudes — all the Holy Land 
there, and crowds from outside it. What an 
era it must have been in the "religious world" 
of that land ! How old conservative Scribes 
and Pharisees must have shaken their heads, 
and called out upon the times ! How many 
decorums must have been violated, when wise 
old grey-beards submitted to be taught by 
this wild rustic, and dainty daughters of 
Israel passed through the waters under his 
hands weeping tears of penitence ! 

But such, dear ones, is God's way when He 



142 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

prepares it ; and doubtless many a score of 
disciples was born for Christ who came after, 
by this revolutionary infringer of decorums. 
For his cry ever was, " Not I, but another — a 
greater than I is coming ! My baptism is but 
half — is not half, that which Grod has to do 
with you." 

One day, among the crowd, came a young 
man to be baptized, known to John, and yet 
unknown. Known — for he had long been 
acquainted with Him personally — he had long 
known his blameless life and holy character ; 
but unknown, for he had never heard of his 
high mission ; this was known probably, since 
the death of Joseph and the parents of John, 
to none but her who had laid up and pon- 
dered all the events of his infancy in her 
heart. 

"With noble humility, John declares, " I have 
need to be baptized of thee : and comest thou 
to me ? " And after the baptism, a sacred 
sign, long ago announced to him, reveals to 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 143 

him that his holy kinsman was the Greater 
One, who should baptize with the Holy Ghost. 

At once the self-renouncing Baptist pro- 
ceeds to fulfil his direct mission, of sending 
men to Christ. No long time after, when a 
commission was sent out from Jerusalem to 
demand of John who he was, and why he did 
these things, he plainly told them that the 
Great Baptizer with the Holy Ghost waa 
among them ; that he was nothing but a voice 
in the wilderness, preparing the way before 
Him. And the very day after this inquiry, 
he directs two of his disciples Sway from him- 
self to Jesus, pointing Him out as the Lamb of 
God. 

There is nothing finer in history than this 
self -renouncing : except perhaps the noble 
testimony which the same holy man bears to 
our Lord further on in the same fourth Gospel, 
calling Him the Bridegroom, and himself only 
the Bridegroom's friend — announcing that 
Jesus must increase, and he must decrease. 



144 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

And accordingly from this time onwards the 
star of the Baptist wanes and pales before the 
rising Sun. 

The next we hear of him is in the court 
of a licentious tyrant, Herod Antipas. This 
bad man, as it so often happens, was not wholly 
bad. He had times of good resolves, and at 
such, times he sent for John, and heard him 
willingly, and even made changes in his con- 
duct in consequence. But at last, as so often 
in intercourse between bad men and good, 
came a time when something had to be told 
which would give mortal offence. Herod had 
taken away Herodias, his brother's wife, and 
lived with her as his own. " It is not lawful 
for thee to have her/' said the intrepid man of 
God: thereby making himself the object, and 
at last the victim, of the abandoned woman's 
vengeance. 

But first comes a very remarkable passage 
in John's course, respecting which some have 
doubted as to how we are to explain it. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 145 

He was lying in Herod's prison at Machgerus, 
a town in Peroea. Our Lord was teaching and 
working miracles in the neighbouring district 
of Galilee. Let us think for a moment of the 
two. 

We may well imagine what an earnest and 
lively interest John must have taken in the 
Person and career of our Lord. Think what 
his own baptism had been — and then remem- 
ber that it was to be as nothing in comparison 
with that nobler baptism with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire which the Lord was to confer. His 
own, the lesser baptism, had b§en frequented 
by immense multitudes from the whole of 
Palestine. What then was this second and 
greater baptism accomplishing ? In his prison 
he heard of the works of the Christ. But what 
were they ? A few miracles of healing in an 
obscure district — and these accompanied with 
strict injunctions to the healed not to publish 
his fame abroad. Was this He who was to 
come ? Not that the Baptist could really 

L 



146 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

doubt concerning the Person or the mission 
of Jesus. But all this was so unlike anything 
which he had foretold — the Lord's way of 
comparative obscurity and delay was so incom- 
prehensible to him — his soul too, very likely, 
was so faint, and sick with hope deferred, — that 
he sends by his disciples a message, meant, I 
cannot doubt, as a stimulus to that glorious 
course which seemed to him to be but half 
undertaken, "Art thou He that should come, 
or do we look for another ? " How the Lord 
answered this inquiry we know : our present 
concern is more with the testimony which it 
drew from Him to the person and career of 
John. This reed shaken with the wind, this 
Fainter under persecution, — was John this, 
when they went out into the wilderness to see 
him ? Nay, he was a prophet, and more than 
a prophet : the greatest of the sons of men, — 
the messenger sent to prepare the way of 
the Lord. But the grace of the Gospel, the 
standing and glory of even the little ones of 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 147 

Christ's kingdom, these he had not : the 
brightest star of night is weaker than the 
feeblest beam of the risen day. 

And now we come to the closing scene — 
that dark record of hasty vows, and watchful 
vengeance, and holy blood shed as water on 
the earth. 

It was a great festal day. The lords and 
high captains and chief men of Galilee sat 
at a banquet with the king. The feasting was 
over, and the wine was flowing freely. The 
daughter of Herodias came in and danced 
before them. Strange place 'and scene — and 
strange consequences followed. The infatuated 
king, robbed of his better senses by the plea- 
sure of the licentious exhibition, made her the 
fatal promise, — confirmed it by the fatal oath. 
The girl is puzzled what to ask — she goes and 
consults her mother. Then vindictive hatred, 
ever ready, makes its spring : " Ask for the 
head of John the Baptist." And so, as a bit of 
after-supper entertainment, at the asking of a 



148 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

worthless girl, in spite of the wretched king's 
undissembled grief and reluctance, the minister 
of death is sent to the prison, the greatest of 
the sons of men is foully slain, and the holy 
lips which had uttered the message of God's 
Spirit to Israel are given into the hand of 
the wanton, are passed about for the gaze 
of the revellers, and are finally delivered up 
to the criminal wife herself to insult and 
cast out. 

Never was a more terrible tale — never one 
with sadder, wilder contrasts. It has almost 
the same character, in its higher realm of 
interest, as that of some of the old Greek 
histories of which I was telling Jessie the 
other day — the character of irony — mockery 
of human pomp, and mockery too of even 
solemn human hope. The sport of the reveller, 
the reward of wanton frolic, is the mangled 
head of God's prophet : and on the other side, 
the end of the glorious career of the forerunner 
of the world's King is to fall as it were by a 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 149 

chance blow, victim to the spite of a worthless 
woman. 

But if the holy martyr had small respect 
there, it was not so everywhere. The poor 
mutilated body was cared for by the disciples 
who had followed his teaching : and when 
they, had done this, they went and /told Jesus. 

And here is perhaps the most notable feature 
of the whole. The Lord when He heard it, 
went apart into a desert place to pray. Was 
it, that the Forerunner had gone before Him, 
as in ministry, so now in suffering? For 
from this time seems to come gradually over 
Him that deepening cloud into which He 
entered further and further, till He fell into 
the very power of darkness. 

And now it has struck me, my darlings, 
that we are all, however unlike in the actual 
facts of our position, yet in some remarkable 
particulars like this Forerunner. 

I need not tell you, how we are all put here 
to point out and testify to the same Great One 



150 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

who is to come — this, thank God, we know, 
and I believe we are doing it, each in our 
place, as God has given us power. 

But the point in which I would make the 
comparison is this. We are living, as he 
lived, each of us, at the end of the night, at 
the break of a brighter day. "The night is 
far spent, the day is at hand/' Whatever we 
may be now, the greatest, wisest, holiest of 
us all in the Church on earth is less than the 
least on that other side. 

And we, in our imperfect estimate of our 
Lord's ways, may like him be disposed some- 
times to look out of our earthly prison, and in 
displeasure at his delay, almost question his 
mission. 

So do temptations and so do duties repeat 
themselves, and characters even the most un- 
like cover common ground. 

And another thing has struck me while we 
have been concluding, with reference to our 
future subjects. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 151 

This martyrdom of John seems, as I said, 
to have been the first great introduction to our 
blessed Lord of the approaching period of his 
sufferings. 

How will it be, if we devote some of these 
our evenings in tracing out his sufferings ? I 
don't think that exactly this has^ been done 
before — I mean following out, from the very 
beginning, the tokens of the coming Passion. 
It will be work of the deepest interest, and 
will, I think, admirably suit these our evening 
talks, which are rather exercises of the fancy 
about divine things than regular treatments of 
divine things themselves. 

I see Jessie is looking at the clock and at 
her music-stand. Well, there can be but one 
thing to-night — that glorious opening of the 
Messiah again. I wish we could do Wise's 
grand anthem, " Prepare ye the way." But 
we have not numbers for that : numbers, I 
mean, who can take up points such as there 
are in that anthem. 



XI. 

TT^ these our Sunday evenings' talks we have 
hitherto dealt exclusively with the history 
of our Blessed Lord. And there is plenty yet 
remaining for us in that inexhaustible store- 
house to draw out and enjoy hereafter. 

But it may be well for us all, and even for 
our little one here, that we should sometimes 
talk over other points of religious interest. 
And Jessie has asked me a question, arising 
out of what she has been reading in the 
papers, which may I think profitably employ 
us to-night. Besides touching a point of 
Christian conduct on which we all want 
putting right, it actually does connect itself 
with a portion of our Lord's life on earth, and 
with a memorable utterance of his sacred lips. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 153 

She wonders how we are to reconcile our 
Lord's own sayings about his disciples with 
the conduct of his disciples now. And she 
especially selects that one saying which He 
uttered about the man who did not follow 
after the Apostles, and yet worked miracles in 
his name. 

Well, certainly if we wanted an extreme 
case of nonconformity, we could not have 
imagined a stronger one. For here were the 
chosen company, and in the midst of them the 
Blessed One Himself, going the way appointed 
for Him, nay at that very time setting out on 
the great final journey which was to lead to 
his sufferings and death. And here was one, 
following Him not as they followed Him, 
having some peculiar belief and notions of his 
own about Him as the Messiah, yet strong 
enough in that faith, such as it was, to work 
miracles in his name. And this man goes 
his own way in his nonconformity and per- 
versity, — lets the great and holy company 



154 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

round the Lord Himself, the future founders 
and pillars of his Church, go their way, and 
walks on in his separatist pride and irreve- 
rence. T\ r as there ever such a case for an 
anathema ? What a noble and decisive ex- 
ample might the Lord have set at that mo- 
ment, which should have put down for ever 
all such independence of thought and action 
through the coming ao-es of the Church ! He 
had lately rebuked an Apostle with " Get 
thee behind me, Satan:" has He no words 
in reserve, even stronger than these, whose 
terrible sound may echo down the spaces of 
time, and wither back during: the long here- 
after the first springings of dissidence among 
his followers ? 

But as we look at the case, there appears 
in it something more than we have as yet 
touched. "We have already remarked, that 
this happened at the outset of that great last 
journey to Jerusalem. Xow about that jour- 
ney there was something very solemn, and of 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 155 

its own kind. It was the especial dedication 
of the Lamb of God to his sufferings for the 
sin of the world. The resolve, uttered in the 
words, " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem," 
was uppermost in his soul, when the rash 
Peter rebuked Him for what seemed a morbid 
dwelling on the sufferings about to be sought 
by Him. It was the abhorrent idea of any- 
check in his own soul to that all-absorbing 
and holy resolve, which led Him to turn so 
sharply on his Apostle, and to designate him 
as no other than a servant of the adversary 

■r 

who w r ould turn Him away from his chosen 
work of love. And then in the power of that 
great resolve, He went before his chosen band, 
with his face stedfastly set towards Jerusalem, 
divinely glorified for his divine errand. What 
words are those of St. Mark, w r here he says, 
" Jesus went before them, and they were 
amazed; and as they followed, they were 
afraid"! 

It seems the chapter of the Gospel history 



156 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

fullest of the Divinity, fullest of the atoning 
Love of the Blessed Jesus : the one time of all 
others when those who followed behind Him 
were the most closely knit into his personality 
as the Holy One of God, most sprinkled by 
anticipation with the blood of that sacrifice, 
which He was to. offer for them and for all. 

And yet, at such a time, when God manifest 
in the flesh was bursting the bands of his 
humiliation, when the holy shadow of suffer- 
ing was enwrapping the mystical body in 
union with its consecrated Head — at such a 
time, was one calling himself Christ's, who 
looked askance upon the one company which 
carried the world's salvation, and refused the 
appointed path by which the Son of God was 
ascending to his deed of love. 

Again, what nobler opportunity could have 
been offered to the Lord, of once for all putting 
an end to the rejection of holy doctrine ? That 
indignation with which He repelled the idea 
of backwardness to suffer on his own part, 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 15; 

shall it not break forth against one who has 
no sympathy with, and cares not to travel on, 
that journey of redeeming love ? 

But all is not yet exhausted. Those Twelve, 
and the others who accompanied Him — if they 
imperfectly apprehended the great things of 
which I have been speaking, at least were 
ardent and blameless in their love for Himself 
and reverence for his person. Once, He had 
said something too hard for their understand- 
ing. In consequence, many of the disciples 
had left Him and walked no longer with Him. 
And when He turned to the Twelve and asked 
them, "Will ye also go away?" they had 
replied, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou 
hast the words of eternal life." Now it re- 
quires no stretch of -imagination to persuade 
ourselves that this man of whom we are 
speaking had split off at that very time. We 
are not told, mind, that those who did so 
ceased to be disciples, but that they ceased to 
walk with Jesus. If this were so, then there 



: 



158 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

had been a distinct offence given, and an act 
of alienation had taken place from the person 
and company of the Divine Master. And 
when we think of this, think at the same time 
of all the loving invitations to come to Him 
and follow after Him which the Lord was 
ever giving, and then picture to yourselves 
this man, who refused them all, and preferred 
not to walk with Him. For such an one, can 
any rebuke be too decided, any discourage- 
ment too pointed ? But even one thing more 
remains. If — and there can be no reason why 
it should not have been so — this man were one 
of those who ceased to walk with the Lord on 
that occasion, why and on what account had 
he so gone back ? I said, because Jesus had 
uttered something too hard for his compre- 
hension. Now, of what kind had that hard 
saying been, and on what subject ? Why, 
precisely on the one most solemn subject on 
which our Lord could discourse to his dis- 
ciples — on that eating of his Flesh, and drink- 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 159 

ing of his Blood, by which, we have part in 
Him, and live by Him : that partaking of 
Him, which is represented to us, and made 
real by our faith, in the holy ordinance which 
He afterwards instituted — the Sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper. This it was, which those 
w r ho went back, and walked no longer with 
Him, found too hard for them, and could not 
bear. Those it would be, who, when the ordi- 
nance pointed at by our Lord's discourse had 
been founded, might indeed be willing and 
glad to partake of it as a touching remem- 
brance, but would still take offence at its 
higher and holier aspects. All the great 
foundation doctrines which centre in that holy 
Sacrament were put aside by this disciple who 
walked no longer with Jesus. He saw no 
beauty, no life, in them : the sayings concern- 
ing them offended Him, and formed no part 
of his religion. Once more, and for the last 
time, who so richly seemed to deserve strong 
rebuke as this neglecter, this despiser, of the 



1 60 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

grandest doctrines which lie at the root of the 
Christian life ? 

Let us just sum up what we have been 
gathering together. Here is a man calling 
himself a disciple of Christ. But he follows 
not with that band of chosen ones of which 
He is the centre, and who are bound together 
by the confession that He is the Holy One of 
God : he has no sympathy with that road to 
the Cross, along which the Lamb of God is 
leading his own : he has been offended at our 
Lord's words, and has broken away from his 
company ; and the words at which he has 
taken offence are the very character of the 
central doctrine of the Christian life, the par- 
taking of the Body and Blood of the Lord in 
the Ordinance of his own appointing. 

And now the indignant disciples, having 
seen him in this his separation naming the 
name of Christ, approach the Master with the 
tidings, and in look and tone demand the 
anathema so justly due. They themselves had 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. i6r 

already forbidden the intruder : forbidden him 
on the usual ground — " because he followeth 
not with us." There could be but one way of 
following Christ ; and if perchance they were 
disposed to allow more than one, yet it would 
be impossible that this one, with all its defects 
and all its offences, could be allowable. 

But what is the Lord's answer ? " Forbid 
him not." Oh wonderful reply ! And the 
reason is not less wonderful : " For he that is 
not against us is for us." To what do they 
amount when united? To what but this — 
Put no check on efforts for Christ, however 
ill-judged, however self-willed, however im- 
perfect as to grasp of doctrine or entire alle- 
giance to Him as others judge it : He who 
knows the heart, let Him be judge of the 
heart's intents. Aim not at, expect not, con- 
formity : all think not alike, all feel not alike, 
all act not alike. Christ came for all, is wide 
enough for all, is deep enough for all : let all 
come to Him- — let all work for Him. Oh who 



1 62 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

can tell the depth, and breadth of love which 
is in that human heart of our Blessed Master ? 
Very few, my darlings, make the slightest- 
effort to conceive it. Look at what Christ's 
Church in general has done. She has laid 
down a certain framework of outward govern- 
ment and of doctrine, and then has faced about 
to the world, and proclaimed, This or none ! 
All who, calling themselves by Christ's name, 
doing good in Christ's name, follow not with 
her, she has severely and ruthlessly forbidden. 
From the first days downwards, this has been 
her habit, and is her habit still. How far she 
has put it forth in practice, has depended 
simply on how much power the human laws 
of this or that country have given her power 
to persecute. Death, torture, banishment, 
spoiling of goods, deprivation of civil rights, 
these have been her treatment of those re- 
specting whom her Lord has commanded, 
" Forbid him not." And where these were, 
owing to good laws made by Christian states, 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 163 

not in her power, there she has done all she 
could in the same direction. She has drawn 
up canons, as they are called, full of curses 
of such her fellow- Christians; she has called 
them by all sorts of hard names ; she has 
turned the cold shoulder upon them, and 
excluded them from common society. And if 
any have made a real attempt to return to the 
example of our Blessed Master in their treat- 
ment of these their brethren, the persecutors 
have turned upon them with a rage lamentable 
to behold. 

r 

Let us look for a moment at the incident 
out of which Jessie's question arose. A body 
of meE, associated for a high and holy work,* 
purpose to begin that work by receiving to- 
gether the blessed Supper of the Lord. Among 
them are several who, living and working in 
Christ's name, follow not with us. To their 
lasting honour, they accept the proposal, and 
without scruple come with us to the Lord's 
* The revision of the New Testament. 



1 64 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

Table, conforming to our Service, adopting 
our posture, receiving the bread and wine at 
the hands of our minister. Was ever a scene 
over which our Blessed Master's loving heart 
would more entirely have rejoiced ? Was ever 
a concourse which ought to have been viewed 
with more unmixed and ardent thankfulness ? 
And yet, what has happened ? I am not sur- 
prised, Jessie, that on reading that disgraceful 
page in our English Church history, you 
should have asked me the question which I 
am endeavouring to answer. Instead of thank- 
fulness, we have had a shout of indignation 
and rage from the persecuting party. First of 
all, they were not ashamed to quote, as against 
a great and noble act of Christian love, the 
minute rules of detail which are laid down to 
guide us in our regular action with our own 
members. Then, when this would not do, 
they betook themselves to the assumption that 
some one among these our brethren denied 
the Divinity of our Blessed Lord, The 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 165 

assumption happened to be a false one : no 
matter : whether it were true or false, they 
had taken no pains to examine : it served 
their purpose to rouse angry feeling and to 
build anathemas upon. Had it been as true 
as it was false, we have seen what line of duty 
our Lord's example points out to us, From 
that Table Christ's disciples are not to be 
driven away. Do they call Him Master ? Do 
they devote themselves to his work ? Then, 
however little they may hold of what we 
ourselves esteem essential doctrine respecting 
Him, we have no right to exclude them. To 
do so, would be to insult Him, who alone 
knows their hearts. To do so, would be to 
scandalize the great yearnings of Christian 
humanity, which in all its thousand varieties 
of character, is drawn after Him. " Come unto 
me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden," 
He stands and cries. " You shall not come/' 
shout our zealous friends. To which will the 
Church listen ? 



1 66 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

Well, I suppose we have no doubt about the 
answer. I suppose we, though some of us are 
young, are old enough to see through the 
angry nonsense which has been talked about 
this matter, and to know that the Lord didn't 
mean his Apostles to cease from walking with 
Him when He told them not to forbid those 
who had thus ceased. We know that it is not 
because we value Him little, but because we 
value Him much, that we insist on embracing 
as brethren all who call themselves by his 
name ; because we hold his blessed and ador- 
able Person to be the centre and heart of all 
our faith, and not any system of truths which 
has been built up around that Person. 

But Jessie asked me one more question, 
which I suppose I must try to answer also. 
She wanted to know how it was that our 
Fathers the Bishops had not answered the 
persecuting memorials with more earnestness 
and straightforwardness. 

Well, Jessie, I lament as much as you can 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 167 

that they have not taken the great opportunity 
which God has put in their way, of standing 
in the front of his Church and proclaiming 
that the same mind is in them which was also 
in Christ Jesus. But, my lassie, you don't 
know bishops as well as I do. Many of them, 
I believe almost all of them, feel just as you 
and I do on this matter. But when a good 
Christian man gets made a bishop, there is a 
great chain put on his tongue, and he can't 
say a great many things which he could and 
did say before. You must allow for this. A 
bishop has not merely his own view to main- 
tain, but he has the whole Church to govern. 
If I had been a bishop, I never could have 
said what I have said to you to-night. Half 
my diocese would have been up in arms, thun- 
dering, foaming, memorialising, writing to all 
manner of newspapers. 

So I suppose we must be contented as things 
are. For my part, I am most thankful to 
have got the answers we have. Our fathers 



r 



1 68 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

have been led to commit themselves to some 
noble truths which they had not openly con- 
fessed before, and which we, who are not 
bishops, shall henceforth take our stand upon 
as acknowledged principles. 

And that surely is no small gain. 

But Margey is fast asleep on my knee, and 
the servants will be wondering why the bell 
doesn't ring for prayers ; so just get the books, 
Jessie, and look out 

" All people that on earth do dwell." 



XII. 

rj^HIS evening has been bespoken by our 
little Margey. And as she hides her 
head under my arm, and won't plead her own 
cause, I suppose I must say for her what it is 
which has made her wish for to-night to be 
hers. So, little one, I am going to tell your 
story for my text, and then to give you the 
Homily which will follow. 

Margey tells me she went to sleep last night 
with the bright full moon shining in at her 
window. The light on the blind was so white, 
that she jumped out of bed and drew it up ; and 
she could see the dark wood at the top of the 
hill over the glen, and the white sheep in the 
square fold, just as we watched the shepherd 
put them in last night, and all the grass and 



i;o FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

shrubs cut in level lines with the silvery mist. 
And as she lay long afterwards, the great moon- 
beam filled half the room, and sparkled on the 
water-bottle, and threw a little glory on the 
wall from the looking-glass. So she slept — 
and had a dream. And the dream was all 
strange and chopped up and confused, and — 
yes, Margey, I feel the nudge — she had rather 
I wouldn't tell it. But the " outcome " of it, 
as some of our friends say, is this : that she 
wants me to give her an evening about the 
Transfiguration. 

Well, first let us remember a little of what 
we said last Sunday about a certain time in 
our Lord's life on earth : for it is near to that 
same period that the Transfiguration belongs. 
I have often thought of the Transfiguration as 
like a guide lighting a candle when he is about 
to take people into a dark place. He himself 
knows the course perfectly well : every step, and 
every stone, and every treacherous pool ; but 
they do not. And therefore, less for himself 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 171 

than for them, he takes a light, to show them 
the way and make it cheerful for them. Now our 
Lord, at this period of his ministry, was just at 
the entrance of a very dark place indeed. As 
we saw last Sunday, He had just begun to warn 
them that He was going up to Jerusalem to 
suffer and die. They, poor souls, h,ad no mind 
for his words, no feeling of their meaning. 
They were to them so much damp thrown on 
their glowing hopes ; but the hopes glowed so 
brightly that the damp was thrown off or 
absorbed. Still, think what they would, the 
dark place was before them, and into it they 
must enter. 

And of these disciples there were three, 
whose lot it would be to enter deepest and 
farthest — to see the power of darkness in its 
blackest gloom, and witness the lowest de- 
pression of the Lord's human spirit. 

All then, and these three more especially, 
might need a candle in the gloom : might be 
better and firmer for some recollection which 



i?2 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

should connect their Master's glory with his 
suffering — which might enable them by look- 
ing back on it to reassure themselves that the 
rejected of earth was yet the acknowledged of 
heaven. 

And this was not all. One of these three 
had lately confessed Him to be the Holy Son 
of God, the Christ, the Son of the living God. 
Now this was a mighty stretch of faith in 
Peter, and so was it treated by our Lord. But 
the same Peter, on the first mention of his 
coming sufferings, had taken Him and rebuked 
Him, declaring that this should not be to Him> 
and had incurred thereby his severe displea- 
sure. And though these things were said by 
only one, yet doubtless the Three, as leaders of 
the Twelve, and the Twelve generally, had 
both the same firm faith in his Godhead, and 
the same aversion from the idea of his suf- 
ferings. 

Not only then to cheer and guide, but also 
to convince them, was some such manifestation 



•FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 173 

needed as was given to them at the Trans- 
figuration. 

And now, my little one, we have come to 
the point which you have been waiting for, 
and shall soon be dealing with that of which 
your dream reminded you. 

St. Luke's account of what took, place is the 
fullest. He tells us that the Lord took the 
three up into the mountain to pray. He 
seems, and no wonder, to have been very much 
in prayer about this time. His hour was fast 
coming on, and his soul was more than ever 
gathering strength for what was before Him. 

It has been observed that St. Luke is espe- 
cially fond of telling us that Jesus was pray- 
ing. Thus he has this particular (iii. 21) 
when He had come up out of the water at his 
baptism: again (v. 16), when the fame of his 
healing was spreading everywhere, we read 
that He withdrew himself into the wilderness, 
and prayed : again (vi. 12) we read of his 
going into the mountain to pray and con- 



174 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

tinuing all night in prayer to God : again, 
just before the present incident (ix. 18), we , 
have Him praying alone and the disciples 
coming to Him : and after this (ch. xi. 1), the 
disciples, when He had been praying, ask Him 
to teach them how to pray. All this is deeply 
interesting. It shows us that this his constant 
habit made a deep impression on the eye- 
witness, whoever he was, to whom St. Luke 
was indebted for the chief part of his collected 
narrative. 

Well, then, it was no unusual thing for Him 
to go away with his disciples, or with some of 
them, for the purpose of prayer. So He took 
them into the mountain, says St. Luke, and 
tells us no more about the place. But it is 
in places generally that St. Luke's narrative is 
not particular. St. Matthew and St. Mark 
both tell us that this happened near Caesarea 
Philippi, far away to the north of our Lord's 
usual haunts by the Sea of Galilee. Our friend 
Dean Stanley, than whom there hardly is a 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 175 

better guide in such matters, thinks that the 
glorious snowy height of Hermon was the spot. 
In both St. Matthew and St. Mark it is " an 
high mountain/ 5 and the Dean believes that to 
be the only one in all Palestine which deserves 
such a name. 

"Who can tell their converse as th>ey went up 
steep after steep ? It was evening. Perhaps 
the great orb of glory was sinking to his rest 
far in the sea-line to westward, and the ridges 
of snow above them were rose-bathed with his 
parting ray. Beneath them are fading into 
mist the towers and hills and forests of one of 
the grandest views in the world. And those 
four — One leading, as with a purpose, the rest 
following up the stony track, till at length 
they reach the determined spot for prayer. 

Was the prayer aloud ? Did the Lord go up 
to pray tvith his disciples ? Or was it to com- 
mune all night with his heavenly Father ? By 
what St. Luke says, this seems most probable. 
For he tells us that the three were heavy with 



176 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

sleep, but they kept awake, and saw what 
happened. So that I suppose they were lying 
or sitting, as we know they were in Grethse- 
mane, at some little distance from Him, and 
He was rapt in prayer, possibly, but hardly 
probably, uttering words which they could 
hear. 

They were drowsy, and perhaps, after the 
manner of drowsy persons, listlessly watching 
Him, one lifting up his eyes now and then, 
when suddenly something unwonted calls their 
attention. They could see his Face in the dim 
light turned towards heaven. But now it 
seems as if some new day had arisen and was 
reflected from it. Not so— it is itself the day ! 
From every feature light beams forth. Nor 
only so : his whole Form becomes a pillar of 
light. The garments of earth have become the 
white robes of heaven ! Above, perhaps around 
them, slept the snow in its purity. But sud- 
denly, its purity has died back into dimness. 
That raiment is white as the light, exceeding 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 177 

white and glistening, so as no fuller on earth 
can white them. And that Face, day by day 
known to them, it is strange and unendurable, 
for it is as the sun — pulsing, swimming in 
glory. Is it earth, or have they been trans- 
lated into heaven ? 

Well might they doubt, for now borne 
visibly through the night are present two 
celestial forms, known to them by the loftier 
spiritual instinct into which they are rapt ; — 
the Servant of Grod who spoke with Him face 
to face in the cloud on Sinai, — the Prophet of 
Jehovah who was borne up from Jordan in 
the chariot of fire. These appeared in glory. 
Was their glory like his ? Theirs, the radiance 
of redeemed ones, like his, a ray of the glory 
which He had before the world began ? We 
cannot tell. 

But they are speaking : three celestial beings 
holding discourse in their shining robes and 
with their countenances beaming with bliss. 
They are speaking — -of what? What words 

N 



178 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

are fitting for such a scene of splendour ? Oh 
it is a lesson — a lesson to all splendour — a 
lesson, not to teach that there shall be no 
splendour, but to teach splendour why it ought 
to shine — to teach pride what it ought to boast 
of. They spoke of his decease which He should 
accomplish at Jerusalem. The very theme for 
touching which one of those three had laid 
hands on the Son of man and rudely chidden 
Him with his " This shall not be to thee ; ; '— 
the very words which their hopeful spirits 
refused to hear or understand; — these are 
sounding amidst the dazzling light of those 
wonderful forms. As they veil their eyes and 
gaze, they may hear strange mention of the 
scourge, the crown of thorns, the cross, the 
three hours of darkness, the centurion's spear, 
the counsellor's grave. 

The sounds were incongruous, they im- 
pressed them little perhaps at the time ; for 
the rash and ready Peter, ever first to speak 
the impulse of the moment, finds it good for 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 179 

them to be there ; thinks it well to detain the 
celestial personages, well to perpetuate the 
transfigured state of his Lord ; wants to build 
three booths, or tents, or shrines, for the 
glorified ones to dwell in ; " not knowing what 
he said," says St. Luke ; " for he wist not what 
to answer, for they were sore afraid," says 
St. Mark, writing perhaps with Peter himself 
at his side. That is, joy, and excitement, and 
fear, were mingled, and he uttered, as so many 
of us do, words without meaning. 

But his words passed away, and the great 

r 

Vision went on. A bright cloud came over 
the mountain top— bright, not only with the 
reflected glory of the Blessed Ones, but bear- 
ing a glory of its own, even the glory which 
came down on Sinai, the glory which appeared 
between the cherubims, the glory of Jehovah 
Himself. There was that in it which made 
them tremble as they entered the cloud. Even 
so had one of those glorified ones trembled 
when called into the cloud on Sinai : even so 



s8o FIRESIDE HOMILIES, 

had Jehovah answered him by a voice. But 
now it is not " Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt 
not;" it is not " These are the judgments 
which thou shalt teach them;" no — it is 
another mountain and another time, though it 
is the same Voice : it is the fulness of time : 
the end of the law is come, the desire of the 
prophets is come : " This is my beloved Son, 
this is my Son whom I have chosen ; hear 
Him." 

And the cloud lifts off, the vision passes 
away. Not for Moses, not for Elijah, shall the 
disciples have to build : Jesus was left alone ; 
for Him they will have to build : not on Her- 
mon, not on Zion, but in themselves : for there 
is the place where He will dwell : in their hearts 
by faith. 

But we have been missing one main object 
which doubtless this great event served; the 
mysterious comforting and strengthening of the 
Lord Himself for what lay before Him. If a 
painful time were coming for any of us, say a 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 18 1 

great trial in a foreign land, where none under- 
stood or cared for us, what a blessing would it 
be to see, if but for an hour, some dear and 
valued friend from home, who might talk over 
our coming trouble ! And we need not be 
afraid of likening the Lord to ourselves in this 
matter. I cannot doubt that He came down 
from this mountain strengthened and refreshed 
in soul for his wonderful work of love ; that in 
desertion and dejection that hour of glory and 
that holy converse came back upon Him and 
cheered his spirit. 

Many years after, one of the three had occa- 
sion to write of the truth and genuineness of 
the testimony which he and his colleagues had 
borne to his divine Lord. It was no clever 
fable, he said, which they had followed ; they 
had seen his majesty with their own eyes — ■ 
they had heard the voice from the Excellent 
Glory bear witness to Him. And if you 
turn to that place (2 Pet. i. 16) you will find 
a remarkable and pleasing trace of what 



1 82 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

passed at the Transfiguration. Then, Peter 
had wanted to build lasting tabernacles, and 
had instead heard of the decease, the exodus, 
the pilgrimage, of the Lord : now, he tells 
them, in connection with his mention of the 
heavenly vision, he is looking forward to 
his own exodus, his decease ; for that the 
Lord had shown him that he must shortly 
put off this his tabernacle. And these words 
lead him on to speak of that night on Mount 
Her m on. 

Well, Margey, it's a grand story : and I don't 
wonder at the bright moon, and the sparkles, 
and the silver mist, raising its image in your 
sleeping thoughts. 

From your dream we have gone back to the 
past : and we might have gone forward to the 
future. 

Oh what will it be, dear ones, when the hills 
of the blessed land shall be crowned with 
transfigured ones, all appearing in glory, all 
walking in light ! Much will then be changed 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 183 

— but not those who meet — not the subject of 
their converse. 

There will be those who heard Moses and 
the prophets,— the Church in the wilderness, 
the Church in Shiloh, the Church in Jeru- 
salem, the Church in Babylon : there will be 
the first-fruits of Pentecost, the harvest of the 
centuries, the gleaning of the latter ages. 
And in the midst, the glorified Lord : wearing, 
not the crown of light to be changed for the 
crown of thorns, but the glory which He had 
before the worlds and shall never put off. And 
the decease accomplished at Jerusalem shall 
still be the theme : infinite in its interest, un- 
fathomable in its depths. 

And now suppose we read that account in 
St. Luke, and sing to the grand old tune the 
hymn whose refrain is " Crown Him Lord of 
all." 



XIII. 

A ND now to-night for a reverie of my own ; 
like your dream, Margey, a creature of 
circumstances ; like your dream, graven deeply 
on the mind. 

It was in the hot dry South — no matter 
where ; we needn't plague you with a geo- 
graphy lesson — that mamma and I were to go 
to see a strange old place up in the mountains. 
All had been ordered the night before, and the 
morning rose cloudless and glorious. At an 
early hour we were up and had breakfasted, 
and at the appointed time we were told (and 
indeed discordant sounds were heard, as usual, 
betraying it) that the donkeys were at the 
door. 

In the evening, when we went to give our 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 185 

order, we had been introduced to our guides 
that were to be. 

Jacopo, a lad of about eleven, was to accom- 
pany me, and his sister, Tina, a girl between 
nine and ten, was to go beside mamma. They 
knew every inch of the way, and Jacopo was a 
marvel of steadiness for his years. , 

This morning, though we had heard the two 
voices from our room, not the children, but 
the mother, appeared, with something hanging 
over her arm. She beckoned to them to 
come forward, saying she hoped the Signorina 
would excuse the children going as they were 
" e troppo ealdo per portare i vestimenti" and 
in the heat of summer the children, about 
there, always were as we now saw these. But 
if we wished it, she had some more clothes 
which they could put on. 

They were dressed simply in a little skirt or 
kilt, and nothing else ; and as we looked at 
their smooth tawny forms against the deep 
blue sky, we thought of those charming pic- 






186 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

tures of Dobson's, which Jessie and mamma 
have so often admired, and from one of which 
a little friend of mine now clasping my hand 
could not turn herself away on her first visit 
to the Academy last May. And we told the 
padrona, to the evident joy of the children, 
that we couldn't think of making them un- 
comfortable, and hoped they would go as they 
were. 

So we set out : up steep rugged rock paths, 
and slippery paved roads, with the two little 
guides trotting by us, now chattering and 
playing with one another, now admonishing, 
with noise and otherwise, our dull reluctant 
beasts : the scene being as Oriental as Europe 
could make it : flat-roofed houses, a burnt arid 
vegetation, — prickly pears, and aloes, and figs, 
and now and then a stately palm, and the 
splendid vine rambling over all the fences and 
terraces. And then we would pass through 
woods of olives with their gnarled trunks and 
silvery green foliage, and under them wheat 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 187 

and lucerne, and bright pink cornflowers, 
which little Tina was fond of running and 
picking, and bringing to mamma for her hat. 

At last Jacopo, with all the air of head 
guide, came up to mamma's donkey, and 
asked where the Signorina would like to rest. 
It was about mezza via, and, 9s he said 
feelingly, putting his hand on the heated 
medal which hung on his chest, molto ealdo. 
He knew of a shady spot, a little off the road, 
with a spring of delicious water, and there we 
could lunch. I needn't say we were only too 
glad to close with the proposal. 

Now I have brought you all to this spot, 
because it was there that my half-waking 
dream was suggested. We had discussed the 
contents of our basket, and shared them with 
our cheery little friends, while the animals 
enjoyed their meal browsing on the rank 
verdure round the spring. At last they lay 
down, and we followed the example. And 
now occurred that which set me dreaming. 



1 88 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

Jacopo and Tina had settled themselves to 
sleep on the soft thymy grass. He lay, with 
his arms stretched over his head, one leg 
drawn up, the other straight, while she had 
thrown herself with her head on his bosom, 
one arm under his shoulder, the other across 
him, and holding the medal, with which she 
had been playing. I first drew mamma's 
attention to the group, and then thought, and 
thought, and closed my eyes, and thought on, 
till the limit was passed between the thoughts 
which we make and the thoughts which make 
themselves, — and thus they went. 

"Suffer them to come to Me." It was on 
some such track as this, while He was teaching 
and healing, that the parents brought the 
children to the Lord. Some such burning sun 
glared down on the group, and over soft brown 
limbs like those lying twined there in childish 
sleep, did He pass his blessed and blessing 
hands. 

Suffer them to come to Me. And how many 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 189 

ways are there to Him ? One way was that of 
those Judsean parents ; simple enough, if we 
come to think of it. They wanted Him to 
touch them. Well, this perhaps was super- 
stitious — foolish. So thought the wise dis- 
ciples. The earnest Peter, the zealous James 
and John, Thomas, slow of credence, Philip, 
ambitious of the Divine vision, Matthew 
versed in this world's money matters, — and 
that one who never had a heart for hi& 
Master's career at all,— all these combined 
with the rest in keeping those fathers and 
mothers away. But what thought, and what 
said He P " Bring them not for the touch 
that passeth away, but bring them to be 
taught, when they can learn ; " was this what 
He said ? It was not : what He said was, 
" Suffer them to come to Me" : to come and 
be touched, if they will : to come as they will,, 
as they can. 

And thus the thought bore itself in upon 
me, how the Lord's words are larger and more 



' 



190 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

glorious than ever we suspected thein to be. 
I had been talking to Jacopo about such 
things, and I found that he, poor lad, had 
been taught to shrink from the very thought 
of Him who said these words. He hoped the 
Madonna would intercede for him, for he had 
been told that Gresu would judge him at the 
last day, and he had seen over the great door 
of the church the Judge going to throw light- 
ning among the assembled crowd, but the kind 
Madonna was holding back his arm. And 
Tina, she was near death when she was little, 
and she had been brought and laid in the arms 
of the great Madonna in the church of San 
Matteo, and so she was always to belong to 
the Madonna, and would one day go and be a 
little servant girl at the Convertite Convent. 
But not a string of either of the little hearts 
had ever vibrated in harmony with a word or 
a look of the Blessed One. 

Well, well : it is a very by-lane kind of way 
this of coming to Him : foolish, superstitious. 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 191 

So we think: and doubtless we have, as the 
Apostles had, some right on our side. But 
shall we not listen for his voice ? Are there 
no flowers of his planting in the by-lane, 
though the children may not meet Him there 
in person ? May not little Tina learn from 
her devoted lot womanly purity, sweet 
thoughts and deeds of charity ? May not 
Jacopo, even now steady beyond his years, be 
snatched from the burning flame of tempta- 
tion, and learn to walk in the ways of One 
whom yet he knows not as some know Him ? 
Shall we, in our turn, rebute those that 
brought them ? Shall we whisper a passing 
word, to break the spell of the childhood's 
faiths ? Listen — the voice seems to come over 
the blue sea lying in the haze of noon — the 
gentle words seem to whisper in the leaves 
of that vine under which the soft limbs are 
resting — " Suffer them to come to Me/' 

And then the thought took another turn. 
How many dear children, by way of being 



' 



192 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

brought to Him, are most effectually kept 
from Him ? Horror of horrors used to be to 
me, in my childish days, that saying of the 
Catechism on Sunday — that learning of the 
Collect, and proving it by texts of Scripture. 
And if this was so with me, surrounded by 
kindly influences, what must all the fierce dis- 
cipline be to thousands of children, whereby 
folk trv to make them religious ? " Suffer 
them to come to me — forbid them not ! " 
They have their own ways, curious and foolish 
some of them : let them come. Some play 
at church, with chairs for congregation and 
music-stool for pulpit, and nightgown for 
surplice : I remember once playing at heaven ! 
And then there are all the quaint questions 
and queerly put original thoughts, by which 
children try to approach Him who is the great 
centre of all questions. To us, they savour 
of irreverence : but not to them : the weaned 
child may play in the hole of the asp : forbid 
them not. If it thaws, God, they say, has 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 193 

used up all the frost : if it thunders, the 
angels are beating God's big drum. So they 
come : little faltering steps : shrill voices, 
crying Hosanna after their fashion in the 
aisles of the Temple : tiny hands, clapping, 
clapping, when they should be folded in 
prayer. Never mind : let them come ; forbid 
them not. 

And sometimes while they are coming, the 
blessed Hand itself, even now, is laid upon 
them and fetches them home ; the blessed 
Voice, as of old, whispers, " Jalitha, cumi," 
" Come, my child." And the journey up 
looks but blank to us who are below : for the 
little rosy cheek grows blanched, and the light 
of the bright eyes is dimmed, and the merry 
voice sounds sad and far away, and there are 
soft steps and watching. Again, let them 
come, forbid them not. We see but the wheels 
and axle of the fiery chariot, all the splendour 
is upward : and while we mourn round the 
bed, the fair spirit is lifted to its place in the 
o 



194 FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 

blissful ranks, and the pure in heart has 
entered on the sight of God. When He calls, 
when He fetches them, let them come to Him. 
And one thing more was borne upon me 
before that siesta ended and we rose and went 
on our way. In those wonderful Beatitudes, — 
and in this saying also, the Lord gave his 
great and mighty reason. " Forbid them 
not," He said : " for of such is the kingdom 
of Grod." How, and why? Just now when 
Jacopo and Tina were finishing our luncheon, 
I was watching them. The only thing in the 
shape of a delicacy was some sort of cake 
or confection, which we had just tasted, and 
finding too sweet, had put aside. This mamma 
had cut for them into two equal parts. And I 
saw Jacopo just play with his and eat a few 
crumbs off its crust, and then when Tina had 
done hers and wasn't looking, he quietly laid 
it in her lap. "What did the Lord mean but 
this, that the fresh simplicity of kindliness, 
the one-aimed act of lovingness, belongs to 



FIRESIDE HOMILIES. 195 

the child, and that such we ought by his 
grace to keep ourselves, if we want to be of 
his kingdom? 

Of such is the kingdom of heaven. Then, 
beyond a doubt, in that kingdom shall all the 
little ones be found. For it is not as children 
of Christians, it is not as baptized, but it is 
as children, that of such is that kingdom. 
Untainted by duplicity, by impurity, by the 
schemes of ripened selfishness, they are they 
who reflect the most unbroken rays of Him 
who is the Light of the world, and in them 
the Great Redemption takes effect at once and 
unquestioned. 

The Gospel of the Children — how pure, how 
bright, how simple ! It is not made up of 
doctrines, it has no sects, it never learned a 
creed. " I believe," it has never descended 
to : it dwells as yet in the higher realm of 
" I love." In it the blessed Lord is not a 
Personage in a book, but a shining Person, 
ever present, ever radiant : not one who lived 



196 FIRESIDE HOMILIES S 

ages ago, but one seen and heard day by day. 
It is the only Grospel that is written nowhere 
but on the heart ; the only Gospel, every one 
of whose disciples shall come right at the 
last. For " of such is the kingdom of Grod;" 
and unless we turn back from our selfishness, 
from our vanity, from our duplicity, and be- 
come as one of them, there is no entrance for 
us there. 

So I awoke from my reverie, and the merry 
voices of Jacopo and Tina were ringing round 
us, and in a few minutes we were again on our 
way to the strange old city in the mountains. 



THE END. 



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Book List. 13 



HENRY HOLBEACH : Student in Life and Philo- 
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Book List. 15 



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Book List. 17 



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Book List. 19 



MACLEOD'S (Norman, D.D.) Peeps at the Far 
East. With. Illustrations. Small 4-to, cloth gilt extra, 21s. 

Eastward. With Illustrations. Crown 



8vo, 6s. 

Character Sketches. With Illustra- 



tions. Post 8vo, 10s. 6d. 

The Temptation of Our Lord. Crown 



8vo, 5s. 

Parish Papers. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Reminiscences of a Highland Parish. 



Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Simple Truth spoken to Working 



People. Small 8vo, 2s. 6d. 

The Earnest Student: being Memo- 



rials of John Mackintosh. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

The Gold Thread. A Story for the 

Young. With Illustrations. Square 8vo, 2s. 6d. 

The Old Lieutenant and his Son. 



With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

The Starling. With Illustrations. 

Crown 8vo, 6s. 

Wee Davie. Sewed, 6d. 

How can we best Relieve our De- 



serving Poor ? Sewed, 6d. 



War and Judgment. A Sermon 

preached before ^aid published by command of the 
Queen. Sewed, is. 

MACQUOID'S (Mrs.) Through Normandy. With 
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Forgotten by the World. Crown 



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MANSEL'S (Dean) The Philosophy of the Con- 
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20 Daldy^ Isbister, and CoSs 

MARKBY'S (Rev. Thomas) Practical Essays on 
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MARLITT'S (E.) Gold Elsie. Crown 8vo, 5s. 

MARSH'S (J. B.) The Story of Harecourt; being 
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For Liberty's Sake. Post 8vo, 10s. 6d. 

Stories of Venice and the Venetians. 

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 5s. 

The Story of Dick Whittington, the 



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MARSHMAN'S (J. C.) Story of the Lives of Carey, 
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MARTIN'S (Rev. H.) The Prophet Jonah. Crown 
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MARTIN'S (W.) Noble Boys. Their Deeds of Love 
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extra, 3s. 6d. 

MASSEY'S (Gerald) A Tale of Eternity, and other 

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MAURICE'S (Rev. F. D.) The Working Man and 

the Franchise ; being Chapters from English History on 
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MAZZINI'S (Joseph) The War and the Commune, 
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MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Crown 
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Book List. 2 1 



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NEILL'S (Edward D.) The English Colonization of 

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NOEL'S (The Hon. Roden) The Red Flag and 
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NUTTALL'S (Dr.) Dictionary of Scientific Terms. 
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PATHWAY OF PROMISE (The). Neat cloth, 
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Book List. 2 3 



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Christ and Christendom ; being the 

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r 

Lazarus and other' Poems. Crown 



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Crown 8vo, 55. 

Sunday. Sewed, 6d. 

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The Tragedies of Sophocles. A Xew 

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24 Dalcly, Isbister, and CoSs 



POEMS WRITTEN FOR A CHILD. By Two 

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extra, 3s. 6d. 

POLITICAL PORTRAITS. Characters of some 
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POLLOCK'S (Archdeacon) The Temptation and 

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PORTER'S (Noah, D.D.) The Human Intellect, 
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I. The Atonement. 
II. The Eucharist. 

III. The Rule of Faith. 

IV. The Present Unbelief. 
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VI. Prayers and Meditations. 
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Testament. 
X. The Christian Ministry. Part 1. 
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XIII. Some Letters of Thomas Erskine of Lin- 

LATHEN. 

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OF LlNLATHEN. 

XVII. The Future Temporal Support of the 

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XVIII. The Relation of Knowledge to Salva- 
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XIX. Reconciliation. 



Book List. 25 



RAE'S (W. F.) Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox: the Opposi- 
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SACRISTAN'S HOUSEHOLD (The). By the 
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SAINT ABE AND HIS SEVEN WIVES. A Tale 
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SAPHIRS (Rev. Adolph) Conversion, Illustrated 
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English Visit. An authorized Collection of 

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Book List. 27 



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Book List. 2Q 



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Book List. 31 



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